Wade sleeps in a comfy bed

Today we left for Mercury bay from Auckland and got a new Driver. Meet Rich, the brand spankin' new driver on his maiden voyage south. This was the definition of rough start. So I started the day very slightly hung over and it was magnified 10 fold by this. The music he played was too loud, the bus was too hot, the mic when it eventually worked had a LOT of feedback, the roads he took were curvy with many stops and starts. He spent an extra 30 min or so doing loops trying to figure out where the Kiwi office was. Even when my hangover did go away I was still feeling ill. Joy! (He got much better down the road though). When we did get to the office, we got everyone sorted, I got some much needed water and food.
We eventually got on the road on the way to Mercury bay. We stopped at this place that had an interesting hike over these hills to these really nice secluded beaches with lots of cool cliffs and rocks and a few waterfalls. Very scenic pictures. Cold water though. Not too much to say, the pictures are really where it's at.
We stopped at another spot slightly down the road that was a hike along this beautiful river on the cliff face that was where a lot of mining used to be done. We followed the old mining tracks through the mountain, posed in a mining car, and saw the foundation of where these large mining facilities were. We also had about 30 people on a swing bridge that said max of 10 ppl....and they were jumping...brilliant!
When we finally got to Mercury bay. Alex and Kim and I went to the grocery store to restock then headed to a nice Indian restaurant for dinner. Everyone stayed back and had food at the hostel there. We came back and joined them in a few card games. Learned how to play a game called shithead (similar to asshole in some of the dynamics). Early bed...REALLY REALLY comfy bed. The next morning it was incredibly difficult to get up as the bed was just that comfy, even though the room was like a shed with 2 bunk beds in it.