I had forgotten how much horse riding hurts

This morning at the bright and early time of 7.15, I had been awake since 6am anyway, I joined the Kiwi Experience bus. It's a large green bus which took us to Paihia, in the north of New Zealand. The driver arranges your accommadation for the night and gives you lots of options of things to do for the next day or so. They also stop for either morning or afternoon tea :) I am very much in favour of this.

We arrived in Paihia at about midday and booked our activities for today and tomorrow. Me and the girl I was sitting next to on the bus, Emily, decided to do the same things. This afternoon we went on a 2 hour horse trek. It was very laid back. They were just trekking ponies that follow each other. My horse made it more interesting for me by clearly being disliked by all of the other horses and it kept either trying to bite the other horses or having the other horses try and kick it. Because I was an 'experienced rider' at one point I was allowed to hang back with one of the guides (my horse was not happy about this) and then got to gallop to catch the others up.

The scenery was quite stunning, we were riding through quite dense forests at one point. Although, the forests are quite odd. They have fir trees that would belong in any English forest, and then every now and then there will be a palm tree or a plant that looks tropical. It's like the vegetation can't decide what it's doing. At one point in the ride we were at the top of a big crater (another inactive volcano) and the views out over the bay of islands was amazing. It really is a lovely place.

So now I'm back at the hostel, aching, and struggling to sit on anything that doesn't have a cushion. Tonight there is a bbq at the hostel, steak and sausages and baked potato, I'm pretty excited. Tomorrow I'm going kayaking around the bay for 4 hours, hopefully the weather will be good. We get to catch and cook some fresh mussels for lunch and get free wine. Yay! Emily and I are getting a bus back to Auckland tomorrow afternoon so we can head south the day after.

(There are a lot of people who are so good and buy food and cook it at the hostel rather than going out for food. I've brought some cereal for breakfast but I think that will be the extent to my attempts at saving money)
xx