Wednesday 10th November - Back in Sydney again!

Sunday morning, I had to get up early again because I'd booked to go on a boat trip that means you can swim with wild dolphins. The catch is because they're wild, you have to find them first, and if you do there are rules and regulations you must follow before getting into the water. One of them is that if they have young you are not allowed to swim with them. We saw dolphins almost immediately on the trip, but they had young with them. There were loads of dolphins in the pod, though, and were swimming up really close to the boat. The problem i had was everytime I went to take a photo, by the time the photo was taken the dolphin would be back in the water, so I had plenty of photos of the sea!!! In the end I decided it would be easier to take videos. There was a photographer on board though so I bought a disk of photos at the end. During the whole trip we saw loads of dolphins, but unfortunately they all had young with them so we weren't able to swim with them. We did see one young one though that had rope stuck around it. It had apparently been like that for 5 days, and people couldn't get close enough to take it off. Other dolphins had seen that the mother and baby were distressed so were swimming with them, and apparently won't leave them until the problem is sorted, even though they have no way of helping themselves.

After the boat trip I stopped on Russell Island for some lunch, before catching a ferry back over to Paihia. Once getting back to Paihia I caught the bus which took me back to Auckland. Pat, John's wife, had returned the same day from volunteer work in Africa so I got to meet her, we had food and went to bed.

On Monday, I went with Debbie and Cameron to Auckland museum. It was a really interesting museum, with lots of different sections. After this I met John who took me to the airport ready to head back to Sydney. After checking in I made my way through to departures. I placed my bags on the belt to be checked, and was told I was going to have my bags checked by someone. Thinking it was just a routine thing, and they check some I quite happily followed the bloke, and was smiling confidently while he checked through my bags. He then asked whether I was aware of the liquid restrictions for boarding planes, and I said yes, I'd just chucked away a bottle of water straight after checking in. He then pulled out my suncream and a body spray and asked if I could explain them. I'd completely forgotten I'd had them there, I thought they were in my main bag that had been checked in!! If I'd had a carrier bag I could have taken one of them with me, but because I didn't, they had to keep them!! He was quite nice about it though, and said it was a shame because it was a good brand of suncream!! (Yeah, expensive too, I thought!!). Never mind!! The flight went ok, I watched Ghost Town, and Friends, and then landed in Sydney.

Going through to customs in Sydney was a bit of a nightmare. The queue was massive!! And it was so hot. But, eventually I made it through and collected my bags. You then have to have all your bags scanned again - another long queue. But, while I was standing there, a woman came up to me and asked whether I had any food in my bags or a sleeping bag, I said no to both, so she stamped my arrivals card and said I could go without having my bags scanned. Result!!

After catching the train, I made my way to the hostel, and went to check in. As i was checking in, the man on reception said someone had made a mistake with my booking. Here goes I thought, but they had actually booked me into a 4 bed dorm instead of a 6 bed, and were only going to charge me the 6 bed price. I was quite impressed with that. The other people in my room are really nice, thankfully, so got chatting to them for a while, before going to bed.

On Tuesday I decided to go and get my nose pierced. It's something I've wanted to have done for a long time, but never got round to it. It really hurt when she did it, but it wasn't too bad afterwards. It hurts sometimes, but the rest of the time it either tickles, itches, or I can't feel a thing! After getting my nose pierced I went to the cinema to watch Four Holidays. Because it was Tuseday the cinema price was a lot cheaper. It was a pretty good film too. I then headed back to the hostel to change ready to make my way over to the opera house to watch Rolf Harris on his opening night there. It was a good show - he did plenty of singing and drawing. I enjoyed it!!

This morning (Wednesday) I decided that I would head to Coogee (I needed to go there anyway), and whilst there sunbathe on the beach for a while. I haven't done that for a while. Unfortunately though, it's really cloudy and windy today, so that's not really going to be an option!!