Current location: Bay of Islands, New Zealand
11.11am, Paddling a Waka Canoe. It's a 50ft Maori war canoe, which takes up to 32 people. You all paddle together, singing songs and chants to get you in rhythm and help you paddle in time. It was one of the most fun and culturally enriching things I've ever done – we learnt so much about Maori culture and heritage from our amazing guide Tani (who was 14 but looked about 34), and found out heaps about genealogy and personal experiences of being Maori. Seriously – DO THIS if you ever go to Bay of Islands, I can't recommend it enough!
We'd arrived at the Bay of Islands overnight – so, when we woke up this morning, instead of seeing sea in every direction, we saw land! And it was beautiful land! We caught an early tender in for our canoe trip then, after our morning on the Waka Canoe, we caught a bus to Paihia. It's a very sweet little town, with lost of history and beautiful beaches, but it felt quite touristy. Very pretty though, so we sat and ate a sushi lunch in the sunshine and then wandered along the beach. We were both pretty tired, thanks to a combination of an early start, an active morning and missing our daily midday nap! Yes, we're quickly becoming nanas!
After a lovely day, we decided to walk back to the tender instead of getting the bus, and it was such a nice walk. New Zealand is stunning! We got back to our ship just in time to get a phone call from Meg, who said they were all going for an early dinner, so we quickly got ready, went straight there and had dinner with Gavin, Meg, Dave, Mick, Gavin's agent and another journalist David. It was a bit sad because tonight's our last night on the ship. It's gone so fast, but I'm excited to see Auckland and get back to dry land.
We got back to our room pretty early and decided to crack open a bottle of champers and enjoy it on the balcony. It was a beautiful evening, helped along by the full moon – what a great way to spend our last night on the Sun Princess!
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