Day three - Auckland, New Zealand

December 13 - So today we went to this amazing famous surfing beach named Piha. It was absolutely beautiful, it is a black sand beach, and there are these amazing rocks sticking out from the ocean. Believe it or not, it is also the home to the world's smallest penguin!! Unfortunately, despite, my efforts in searching, I saw no penguins.

We did some exploring downtown, and that night we met one of our good friends - Ian -at the Viaduct, which is an area downtown that they specifically built for the America's Cup competition which New Zealand hosted in 2002. (For those of you who don't know what the America's Cup is, it is a very famous yacht racing championship.) We ate at this really great restaurant on the water called Wild Fire. Afterwards we hit a few clubs, and, get this, one of the clubs was an ice bar!!! That means that the whole place is made of ICE!! The walls, the tables, the cash register, the cups, EVERYTHING!! That was definitely awesome. I got some great pictures in there. Yes I took pictures, and it definitely screamed tourist, but don't worry, everybody else in there was also taking pictures. So that sums up today...On to the Bay of Islands...