Bay of Islands

The weather has improved in New Zealand's North Island. It's now mostly sunny, but frequently there are brief squalls of wind and rain, which are enough to keep everything wet, and requires us to keep our coats handy.

We managed a driving tour of the Devonport Peninsula, going up Mt Victoria and North Head, as well as along Cheltenham Beach, Narrow Neck Beach, Bayswater Marina and Stanley Point. The first photo shows the view from Bayswater across the marina to the Auckland Harbour Bridge. (They do bungy jumping from that bridge!) At North Head and Mt Victoria there are remnants of old forts first built to protect Auckland from the Russian attacks (which never happened). An impressive short DVD movie shows in a visitors' centre at North Head showing the history of the forts on this peninsula.

At Stanley Point, the city has only managed to preserve a single, tiny wedge of access and view to the harbour from private development. This is now the Cyril Bassett Lookout, in honour on New Zealand's only Victoria Cross in the Gallipoli Campaign. Bassett lived very close by, and no doubt used to look at the harbour from this precious spot.

We have now driven north out of Auckland to the Bay of Islands. A highlight of this trip was a diversion along the very spectacular Tutukaka coast (second photo), and we had a nice sandwich lunch in the little marina at Tutukaka township. We also enjoyed Whangarei Falls (third photo) which are extremely photogenic, and are running very well given the heavy recent rains.

We have stayed a couple of nights in Paihia (for the benefit of Australian's this is pronounced "pie here"), the main town on the legendary Bay of Islands. We took a commercial cruise of the bay, but the Fullers boat frankly had too many people on board for comfortable viewing and photography. This is not to say that it was overloaded, rather that it was too crowded to be described as a spacious sightseeing vessel. We would recommend trying another provider which has smaller vessels and appears to be less popular with bus trips, for only $2 more.

The cruise itself was excellent. The rain mostly held off, with only one squall, although it was cold and windy. The islands are truly spectacular, many are occupied with occasional holiday homes (some looked magnificent), so this Bay and its surrounds are obviously not protected by being a National Park as we would think it should be. There's lots of history in this bay, mostly involving unfortunate interactions between the Maoris and invading Europeans, mainly French.

The last photo was taken from a hill on Urupukapuka Island where we stopped for an hour or so, mainly, we think, to refuel the crew with lunch. We had fish and chips. This island includes a resort named after the American author Zane Grey (who liked the Bay of Islands for fishing and maybe writing), and the views from on top of the hills are splendid. It is very enjoyable walking up and down well grassed but a bit boggy sheep paddocks, climbing over the occasional stile.

We spent a pleasant hour in the historic and pretty town of Russell, originally a fortified Maori settlement with a name that meant "sweet penguin", but the victorious Europeans changed it to something they thought more pronounceable. In its early days it was a whaling town. It's most readily accessible by ferry from Paihia.

One night in Paihia we dined at Lips Beef and Reef Restaurant. This place is worth a mention because the food was "the best she's had in New Zealand" according to Clare. It was a totally unpretentious place, one we just chose walking by from the menu on the wall, and the wait staff that we met were extremely friendly. Such a pleasant eating experience leaves a very good impression of a town.