Friday, April 6th 2007

Today was a public holiday in New Zealand. We started off by trying to figure our the washer/dryer combo in our room. Once we got that working, we decided to drive to the west coast of Auckland to a town called Piha. We learned quickly that the change from highway to country road is quick and drastic! The windy road to Piha gave us a great view of the Tasman Sea that you can see in our pictures. Just off the coast is Lion Rock. From the top, we enjoyed more spectacular views of the sea.

For our evening activity, we took in our first official rugby game. The Blues v. The Cheetahs (from South Africa). The Blues won 26-8. We learned a lot about rugby and we also learned that when you do "The Wave" in NZ, you not only throw your hands in the air, you throw anything (drinks, trash, etc.) around you in the air as well! We had our first taste of hot chips which are french fries and noticed that all food at the game was fried, but very tasty.