Sick

So this morning I woke up with a sore throat. I am now finishing up the day with a sore throat, a cough, naseusa, a headache, and the shakes.

We left Auckaland this morning after an early morning wake up and a lovely breakfast and got onto the coach. We drove for a few hours today. I seriously can't get over how green this country is. Everyone here also drives on the other side of the road - there are signs that I find amusing that say "keep left when passing". The first stop today was at the Kaumri musuem. The Kamuri is a tree that grows in NZ. They are some of the tallest trees in the world and their wood and bark is seriously flexable which made it fantastic to use for ships and houses and stuff. They also produce this gum that the tree bleeds to heal itself. The problem is that NZ-ers for the ship business and for the gum (good market for it back in the day) cut or either killed 96% of the Karmui trees. They're really slow growing trees (even for trees) and take thousands of years to grow. We saw one today called "God of the Forests" it's over 2000 years old and it's 13.5 m wide. It's bloody huge.

After the trees we went on a tour of where the Mauri (the Native people of NZ) and the Europeans first signed their treaties. The Mauri were very warlike apparently and were even cannibals at times.

We're staying in this current hotel (right now we're in the North at the Bay of Islands) for 2 nights. Tomorrow we have the day to ourselves and so we're going on some tours and such. Then we head back down to Auckland after these 2 nights to start going to the south island.

Hopefully I'll feel better by then.