New Zealand - Bay of Islands

Rock and Roll - cheap pizza then bed for eight...it was a long drive and to be fair - Auckland on a Friday Night is raucous - or it is just below where we stayed. Coupled with a random 'ocean sounds' alarm coming on at silly o'clock we were tired!

As we were next to the treaty grounds we thought that would be a good start to the day. There's a quality cafe (Waikokopu Cafe) in the grounds where we stocked up on another traditionally healthy breakfast! Well, toast for me and a Whaler's breakfast for Alice...with a bonus (and rather delicious hash brown). The walk up introduced us to a number of funky birds including fantail's mobbing Alice, Tui's making all sorts of random noises and a couple of parrots.

We wandered through Waitangi and checked out the Maori Meeting Hall, Treaty House and Waka though the latter was out of bounds for building work. Interesting site to visit and surprisingly understated. Still, we enjoyed it and from there headed off to see Haruru Falls.

GOTD was definitely the Mangroves - really other-worldly environment which was great to walk through. The 10km round trip was excellent. We saw loads of wildlife and in particular a load of cormorant type birds nesting in trees alongside the walkway. No doubt we'll bore you with hundreds of pictures when we get back.

After that it was the sedate ferry across the Bay to Russell. Really lovely place but out of season somewhat like a ghost town. As it was Sunday afternoon there wasn't much sign of life but we had a relaxing time savouring the views.


Following morning we had booked onto the Dolphin safari boat. Within twenty minutes we were in the middle of a pod - a couple of males were doing all sorts of jumps. We managed to capture dozens of splashes but not much else on the camera. When we sped off the whole pod started wake surfing - it was amazing to watch.

The rest of the trip was more sedate with a journey to the 'hole in the rock' and a stop of briefly on one of the islands - home to the very rare and endangered Dottrel. We had hoped to get to swim with some dolphins but the pods we found either had youngsters or weren't in the mood to play. We'd all got dressed up in wetsuits and flippers so at least we looked like idiots for a good twenty minutes before being disappointed. May try again later in the trip.

To make up for the disappointment I drove Alice the hour to Mangonui for the 'world famous' fish and chips. Not sure if the claim is justified but they were tasty. Main issue was more the absence of open petrol stations. There's never one when you have none left! Who's fault was that...?!

Paihia was akin to Russell only in being quiet. The season's yet to start so lots of places were just closed. Choices for catering were therefore somewhat limited. We've still not got the self catering thing sorted as book hotels with no facilities. Not an overly pretty place but lovely outlook and access to some wonderful scenery and activities.

We really enjoyed the Bay of Islands and were therefore really not necessarily looking forward to driving all the way to Coromandel the next day. The good news was that when we awoke to the dawn chorus (we've still not properly adjusted) it was miserable and grey with fairly steady rain. We set off to see some wonderful toilets - but in the end with the bad weather and lack of decent signage we didn't bother stopping in Kawakawa and instead headed straight for brunch in Whangarei - Cafe Deluca - very good! Suitably refreshed we pushed on to Coromandel.