Tauranga Bay, Waterfalls, Cruise in the Bay of Islands

We were slightly grumpy the following morning because we were disappointed the night before with no showers and lots of sand because the showers could only be used by getting tokens from the front office (which was closed when we arrived). However, when John went to pay, he discovered that we only owed $10 in total for our sleep! Amazing! We were pretty happy with the price, and decided not to worry about the shower mixup after that. $10 for literally – a site on the beach. Here is our lovely campsite



We walked along the “pink sands” of Tauranga Bay, and found these awesome rock formations.






The weather started to turn a little sour, so we knew we wouldn’t luck out with any warm weather to sunbathe in. We decided instead to hike up to St. Paul’s Rock. The hike was relatively mild, but one part was fun where we used a chain bolted into the rocks to help ourselves along. The view from the top of the surrounding bays and harbors was gorgeous, but ruined by the presence of some very irritating, pesky flying ants that had decided they owned the top. This in turn made Marian very grumpy and she ran down from the top while John snapped as many photos as he could in five seconds. Here are some photos we took, ALMOST from the top. You can see the lovely landscape in the background.

Here we are at the top and Maran with her scared face from the ants:


A partial view from the top:


Here we are a little further away from the ants:


Here is John going down the chained part of the trail:


Back on the road we went to Kerikeri and John spent a frustrating 35 minutes figuring out to pay a toll road fare online. On the way out of town we stopped off shortly outside of Kerikeri to see some waterfalls.

Here we are at Rainbow Falls outside of Kerikeri


After the falls, we drove onto Paihia, where we were to board “the Rock” cruise at what we thought was 4 PM. It looks like we missed the fine print on this one – we actually were scheduled to board at 3 PM, which was in the fine print noted in the confirmation email sent to us and not correct on their website. Nothing a little water taxi couldn’t solve! We were grateful for the crew at the Rock for their help and understanding, and made quite the arrival on the cruise as the latecomers. We boarded the boat shortly before sundown, and had some beautiful sunset photos to take.




We then fished a little while trying to catch dinner. Marian was the only one to catch a fish from the back of the boat that night but it was too small and hand to be thrown back. So we settled for the steak and sausages that were brought on board to barbeque.

Here is John the unsuccessful fisherman:


After dinner we finished the evening with some night kayaking to see the phosphorescence in the water and to do some stargazing. After a long while John finally found the Southern Cross…which is pointed out as a significant constellation but the guides did not know why it was significant. We headed back to the boat. John decided to join in with the boat crew for a little night swim for an upclose and personal view of the phosphorescence and Marian was a little cold so she took some pictures instead. Here is John getting out of the water: