I last left off on the night before my birthday when we first arrived in Pahia, New Zealand during our road trip. Long story short, it was one of my best birthdays yet. We woke up and had a delicious breakfast at a nearby surf cafe, went for a 3 hour hike through forest and mangroves and ate lunch on top of waterfalls. In the evening, Angie and Laura treated me to dinner at an amazingly great seafood restaurant (Only Seafood) where we met a couple guys from Auckland and our waitress Catherine, all of whom joined us in our pub crawl following the meal. We capped off the night with some dancing and midnight ocean swimming where the water glowed a dim green any time you moved (some micro-organism is responsible for it, I forget the name). The next morning I dropped off Angie and Laura at their new Help Exchange host, a high end bed and breakfast in Keri Keri. Then, I made a 3 hour drive back to Auckland to drop off the rental car and caught a bus the following day back out to Pahia, my new home for the coming month.
I'm currently staying in the Saltwater Lodge, owned and operated by a friendly and laid back couple whom live here along with their 1 year old daughter, dog, and cat. The place was built new a couple years ago, features 19 rooms with private bathrooms, a modern well equipped stainless steel kitchen, a large chillout room with 11 couches, a large video collection, and its all located less than a block from the warm summer water of Pahia. As one of the cleaners here, I receive free accommodation in exchange for just 2 1/2 hours of cleaning each morning. I share the cleaners room with Julia from Germany, and the Danish twins Julie and Sidse (pronounced Ceaser without the r).
A typical day starts out at about 9:30 where I'll wake up take a quick shower, and make a simple breakfast. At 10:00 we start on the rooms, each of us with our own roles for servicing a room or preparing it for new guests. I have what Simon (a friend here from Australia) has described as the 'cruisiest' job. I simply make my way from room to room vacuuming with this hilarious backpack mounted vacuum and topping up the tea and coffee packets. It's almost too easy of a job for the quality of accommodation I receive in return. We finish up between 12:00 and 1:00pm where we prepare a lunch together then have the rest of the day to ourselves.
The owners here, Lucy and Gareth, have a bunch of friends in the area so it's common to be invited to different activities during the day. I've already got to go out sailing twice. Once on Pete's 119 year old sailboat, along with a bunch of other people from the lodge that day. At that age, the oldest boat in the Bay of Islands and second oldest New Zealand made boat in all of New Zealand, there's a lot of hands on work to keeping up the speed and keeping it afloat. I had a blast learning how to raise the mast, steer the vessel, and 'tec' (spelling?) as we changed directions and adjusted the sails for optimal power. Pete was entertainment for the rest of us in his own right. He's a middle aged school teacher that lives on a boat in the harbor, never wears shoes (even in the pubs afterwords), and has the mouth of a sailor, voice of a drill sergeant and the no none-sense personality of a New York police officer. Most of the people were a bit timid as he barked orders but after an hour or so with him it turned into a joke for the rest of us as we laughed at about everything he had to say. I won't forget the face of the girls on board when they were shown the toilet facilities; a green bucket with some left over urine from its last use. Also hilarious was Simon being yelled at by Pete as he was about to pee upwind from us. It scared Simon so bad he nearly fell overboard, unit in hand. We were also really lucky to see a pod of Orkas (killer whales) about 50 meters away, something incredibly rare to see deep in the bay where we were.
A couple days ago, Julie, Sidse, and I got a chance to go out and sail with Rob, Willy, and Dan. Rob owns a boat that's a bit larger and younger than Pete's. The weather was absolutely perfect that day. We got a bit further out into the bay where we passed by quite a few of the more than 100 islands found in the Bay of Islands. It was more of a relaxed trip where we mostly laid back on the bow and took in the summer sun and breeze as we cruised through the open water.
We've gone for a few hikes as well. One was a 5 hour hike through forest and down through the beaches of Opua. At one point we found this cool sandbar out a 100 meters or so into the water. I thought it'd make a great picture to be out there seemingly walking on the water so I went for a swim and the others got some pictures of me running Jesus-esque in the middle of the bay. On the way back in as I was about to climb up some rocks Carin yelled to me "Maybe you should swim to the sand over there instead." Just as I was asking "What's that?" I lost my footing and felt a shooting pain in my foot as it scraped over the rocks below, cleanly slicing my right foot like some poorly placed chef knives and dying the tidepool a shade of red. Grosser still were the small blood sucking bugs I had to pick out of the wound once I swam to the sand on the other side. Fortunately, all is well now and my foot is nearly healed, just a bit tender still.
We play pool almost nightly at the nearby pool hall, 'The Sandpit'. Carin, a girl from the UK that has now since moved on traveling the rest of New Zealand gave me a bunch of pointers and explained the rules (UK rules of course). I wouldn't call myself good yet, but I can already tell a huge difference from when I first started playing. They hold tournaments regularly that attract the local pool crowd. It's impressive to check out just how good you can become with years of practice. It's a great place to kill some time in the evening and if you bring in your ipod the owner lets you hook it up to the sound system and DJ yourself. However, be sure that you play at least one or two games of pool before attempting to in New Zealand. New Zealand rules require that if you lose a game without knocking in a single ball you're required to take off your pants and run a lap around the table in your underwear. At the amusement of the rest of the hall, I found this out first hand in my inaugural game against Carin.
So that pretty much sums up Pahia living at the moment. I've got too many pictures to post them all right now so I'll upload some more soon. I'm sure I'll have some more stories to share as well, so stay tuned! ;)

Everyone sort of looks beat in this picture since we were tired from just finishing up our work for the day, but I wanted to show off our quality eats anyways. (From left to right; Me, Julia, Sidse, and Juli.)