Our trip yesterday was very long. We had decided that on our way to Paihai we would go north and cover the Coromandel peninsula that we had missed and take in the towns of Coromandel, Tapu and Thames. The scenery was exquisite and for most of the journey on the north side of the peninsula we travelled along a narrow, windy road beside the Hauraki Gulf and the Firth of Thames. The downside of this is that in 2 hours we covered about 45 miles, it was a long day.
Eventually we arrived in Pahia and our digs this time overlook the valley and river estuary and are run by Barbara and Alan (Budgie) a retired ENT Surgeon, who had most recently worked at Derriford Hospital. They spend half their time in the UK and half in NZ.
We woke today to blue skies, a light breeze and sunshine so off we went to catch the ferry across the bay to Russell. We were lucky enough to find ourselves in Pompallier which was a French factory built in colonial NZ to print books for the Catholic Mission. It is NZ’s oldest Catholic building and its oldest industrial building. Our guide was marvellous and took us through the whole process from tanning the leather to printing and eventually binding the books. I have to say that this took so long that we had no time for lunch as we were booked on to a cruise. An island is a piece of land or rock surrounded by water and sustaining some form of vegetation and there are 144 islands in the Bay of Islands. Our trip was to take us right out into the Pacific Ocean north of Cape Brett and the hole in the rock. We had been promised a viewing of dolphins but this was not to be and so we were all issued with a free voucher with no time limit to repeat the trip.
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