North Day 3

On Wednesday morning, we left Matakana and headed for Pahia and the Bay of Islands. We took the coastal route and stopped first at Mangawhai Heads. It was another glimpse of the beautiful east coast north of Auckland. We walked down to the shore from the parking lot and then up a small hill for another view. There is a coastal walk in the area, but it’s good we didn’t plan to do that with my one booted foot as a local that chatted with me said that there was some rock scrambling in parts of the path. He also mentioned, after I commented on the surf, that it is much rougher on the west coast and even skilled swimmers can get pulled out by riptides. He started but didn’t finish a story about his cousin having to get rescued, so we were left wondering whether he was saved or not.

We continued driving along the coast for a bit and stopped a couple of times for more coastal pics. At one of our stops, a nice local, who had been following us in her car, let us know that our gas cap was off.

We arrived to our hotel in Pahia just before 2 pm. The check-in process was easy (though maybe too easy as staff didn’t take Bob’s id out of the copier and apparently didn’t need to copy anyone else’s as neither they nor Bob caught it until we went to leave Friday morning). We were focused on walking back into the harbor in the center of town to catch a ferry over to Russell just across the bay.

To get to Russell, we would cross a small portion of the Bay of Islands. The bay contains 144 islands as well as numerous peninsulas and inlets. After purchasing our tickets, we hopped aboard the Happy Ferry (yep, that was the name) and giddily set sail with two other passengers for the 10-15 minute ride.

Russell itself was pretty quiet on a Wednesday afternoon. A lot of businesses had signs that they would reopen Thursday. We weren’t sure if that was normal winter hours or in conjunction with the end of school holidays. We still had a good walk about.