Treacherous Thunderstorms

It was raining today when I got up. Weather forecast was predicting thunderstorms all day so I just took a bus to Whitianga at the top of the peninsula. I had heard that it is usually necessray to have to take at least one wheel off of a bike on these buses, so was a little bit apprehensive, but the driver was really nice and just put the bike on the bus in one piece. New Zealand has a really extensive bus network so it would be quite possible just to take a bus from one place to another, but then off course one would miss the thrill of cycling. We stopped at the top of one of the mountains to take a picture. It was really a shame that it was raining; apparently on a sunny day you can see clear across the Gulf to Auckland. Below is the one picture I got.


The humidity has reached record high levels, even for here. It hit 100% yesterday during the night and has only tampered down to about 80% today. It was insane. Makes it incredubly hard to sleep- nearly everyone at the hostel I was staying at woke up at some point during the night becuase of the humidity.

New Zealanders are a very eco-friendly people and big supporters of the green movement. All of the houses are built with as many windows as possible to let light in during the summer; none have lights on inside during the day. They're all really beautiful- some have entire rows of windows instead of walls on some sides. Its a little bit unusual to look at a house and realize you are looking directly in at someone's living room or kitchen, but it works really well. I'll try and get some pictures up in the next couple of days.

Below are just some pictures from the hostel in Whitianga.