Great Barrier Island

What a weekend. We headed 100km from Auckland to an island called Great Barrier Island. The total population is around 700 which soars to around 10,000 during the summer time. We rented a "bach" (a kiwi word for a house) with 6 of our friends. We were with Phil and Anna (Sweden), Jeroen and Mascha (Netherlands), Jochen (Germany), and Jacco (Netherlands). Some of the highlights from the weekend are listed below.

-The weather was great. It was sunny all 3 days although pretty windy at times on Sunday and Monday
-Our place was a 2 minute walk to the beach which was awesome with fine white sand
-Saturday was filled with a hike (tramp as it's called over here) up to the top of Mt. Hobson. Our hike was supposed to be 3 and 1/2 hours, but we decided to take a different route back and it turned into a 7 hour grueling hike up and down very steep inclines which were very slippery. We crossed many rivers, and crawled up and down. We were all very satisfied when we finished and our muscles were very tired the next day. (Check out the pictures of our hike and some of the steep inclines and declines that we went on)

-We spent a lot of time drinking and eating (white wine, red wine, 42 below vodka, and lots of beer)
-Hung out at the beach and played some cricket
-Went swimming in the chilly water to cool off (only lasted a couple minutes as it was very cold)
-Drove a very old bus on the skinny 1 lane roads
-Hung out with some local fisherman who were all very well intoxicated, 1 was missing his arm and had a hook, and another was missing all his teeth and pinky finger
-Had a very rough 2 and 1/2 hour boat ride back to Auckland on Monday with big waves where Erin ended up getting sick and having a very unpleasant time