Sunday 19th Feb Paihia

We were up bright and early to go on our “Hole in the Rock” cruise around the Bay of Islands. We left Paihia at 8.30am picking up a few more passengers at Russell before exploring the islands. Our captain was both entertaining and very informative. She told us of the history of the Bay of Islands from the Maori times to when the first Europeans arrived. We managed to select great seats outside but out of the wind. We had a spare seat next to us and as the trip was quite full a lovely young English woman asked if she could sit next to us. Rob of course was very quick to respond with the affirmative! Anyway we learnt a lot about her. She was a florist touring around New Zealand in a small van. She was working in Auckland but had taken a few days off. She was able to secure florist work whenever she arrived in a new town over the Summer due to all the weddings that were happening. She had spent time in Australia doing this and said she would keep working this way in New Zealand until winter when she would head back to England for her brother’s wedding where she was doing the flowers. Anyway we had a brilliant time on the cruise, with our captain managing to navigate the boat through the hole in the rock and taking us to the beautiful island of Urupukapuka, where we stopped for 90 minutes. We had a coffee at the café and then headed up and up the nearby hill for a beautiful and scenic view of the surrounding area. Returning to the boat (Rob had made sure he had saved a seat for our new friend), we decided to depart the boat in Russell and have some lunch and a look around. We also decided to do a 1 hour history tour of Russell. Our new friend had told us about a fabulous pizza place just back from the seafront and after finding this place we enjoyed some delicious pizza, salad and calamari. We went for a little wander along the main streets of Russell, once known as the Hell Hole due to all the pubs and brothels there during the early years of the settlement with whalers and sailors frequenting the area. We had booked a 3pm bus tour and Rob and I were the only people on the tour but it still went ahead! We had a 21 seater bus with the driver and Rob and I in it. !t was a great and our driver, John was very informative telling us about the history of Russell and pointing out the old architecture and old homes of the area. At the completion of our tour, we caught the water taxi back to Paihia.