Tiritiri Island

I was greeted by a 6'8 bearded man claiming to be Jon, the lovely bloke who was incharge of the whole program. Now, in describing Jon I see it is only fit to describe the "vehicle" he picked me up in...the van was straight out of Little Miss Sunshine except it was white splattered in dirt and adorned with more tree-hugging stickers than known to man. Now back to Jon...a late 30's beanpole of a man with the attention span of a 6 year old and the hyperactivity of the dog from 'there's something about mary' tripping on speed...in other words he definitely makes things interesting. Within the first five minutes of knowing him he grabbed my hand and started running madly through the downtown of auckland hiding behind street corners and than breaking out into random bursts of skipping...and yes this is the man my life will be entrusted in for the next 5 months. Anyways after being picked up we headed to Circus Du Solei (or however you spell it) which I either was way too jetlagged or just not bright enough to understand what was going on...basically all I can remember was men in tights, some sort of jesus resurrection thing going on...oh and some tumbling. After the circus myself and the other 7 volunteers headed to dinner and a bar because we were trying to waste time before we headed to the campsite (where we would be illegally staying for the night.) The next morning we woke up at around 5 am in an attempt to leave the site before we were ticketed (and to think some of you thought this whole program wouldn't be legitimate? ha!) We ended up kayaking across the open sea to the Tiritiri island, a bird sanctuary where we would end up spending the next 4 days or so relaxing, hiking throughout the uninhabited island and swimming. There are no words to describe sitting atop of a rugged mountain surrounded by trees, all different sorts of exotic birds calling in the background, water surrounding you and the beautiful coastline of Auckland and some remote islands in the distance.
...to be continued...