First Impressions of New Zealand

Simply put, New Zealand is awesome, and with the current enchange rate of 2 to 1, it is awesome, and cheap. Our first couple nights in Auckland we couch surfed in a house full of college students, who we will probably stay with again on our way out. We love Kiwi music, so we bought some new CD's a great music store so we would have some local music to listen to while we explored country. The next place we went was the Coromandel Penninsula, which we could have spent weeks at because of the beautiful beaches, including one ranked in the top 100 in the world. It was very nice but our favorite was hot water beach(above), where at low tide you can dig your own hot spring in the sand! We headed to yet another town that we could have spent weeks, Roturoa, where we had an amazing day of mountain biking on challenging but beautiful trails (Alix ran into a few trees). Our hostel had a geothermal spa, so we spent the end of our day relaxing in it before going to the local pub, Pig & Whistle, to enjoy some live music. It wasn't until we had a few pints that we remembered it was our seven year anniversary, (Sam remembered first by the way) guess we were having too much fun to be caught up in trivial things like that (subtle sarcasm). A little late, but at least someone remembered!
We arrived in Hawkes Bay to another couch surfing host, we didn't believe the house we were staying in at first, we had to go back to the car and double check the address because it was the nicest house on the street with the one of the best views of the bay in town, and it was inhabited by five guys in their twenties, all working at the one of the golf courses Sam has dreamed of playing. We had one day to spend in Hawkes Bay, we had a beautiful day planned out, golf at Cape Kidnappers, and a Fat Freddy's Drop concert at a winery. Of course, it poured rain that day. Golf was cancelled, so we spent the day indoors, watching movies and going bowling with our couch surfing hosts. They snuck into the concert with us and we danced in the mud, bottles of wine in hand, Sam ended the night in jail, nothing bad, we'll explain upon return.