Bay of Islands

For our last few days we decided on a restful time at the beach. I was in charge of route planning the journey up to the Bay of Islands, and read in the weekend paper about this area rated by National Geographic as one of the best coastal areas in the world. I got quite excited looking at a map and realising it was almost on the way. I negotiated a 50 minute detour with my co-pilot, which given the already long trip and the fractious children took some persuading.

It was one of those great moments in life when we arrived at this "amazing" coast only to find a sign warning us not to go in the water due to toxic things. The view was pretty, but it wasn't quite what we were expecting.



















Its funny how you can go out of your way to see something you are told is beautiful and find it uninspiring, and then go round a random corner only to have your breath taken away. Somehow its much more satisfying when you find these beauty spots yourself without the help of the hyped up travel guide. I'm quite proud of my blue bottle jellyfish photo, but I'm not sure what it was doing in New Zealand. I thought horrible things like this were supposed to stay around Australia!

As pretty as it was in thee Northland, the beaches weren't a patch on Aussie ones or the ones on Mull (admittedly you normally need full waterproofs for Mull). We did manage to go and find ourselves a few deserted spots and enjoy the gorgeous weather.

It was lovely pottering around in our hire-car, painting our faces and generally just hanging out. We had a mad dash back to the airport, possible because the bunny mobile was low on carrot juice, or was it just that NZ is huge.