The Northland...Just So Beautiful

Without too many 'right instead of left side' of the road mistakes, we drove North through beautiful, green, lush rolling hills and sparkling blue lakes - just amazing there could be so much beauty here. After 3 hours we decided to stop in Whangarei, a cute little lake side town, for 1 night. From Whangarei we leisurely continued traveling North along the Tutukaka Coast, enjoying the Kauri trees, canopy walkways, and waterfalls in the Reed Kauri Park, had a picnic on a beach, surveyed more potential home sites and ended our travels in the picturesque beach town of Paihai. We found another great hotel close to the beach for 3 nights so we could take advantage of a boat tour to the infamous "Hole in the Rock" in the Bay of Islands; a terrific plane/van tour of the upper western area of Northland, viewing all the areas discovered by Captain Cook - Cape Reinga, 90 mile beach, and all the Bay of Islands - while enjoying some tea and sandboarding in sand dunes; and to top all this off on our last night, we took a quick ferry ride to the pretty town of Russell for a romantic sunset dinner. Though there were a few rain clouds in the evenings, we were grateful to have warm, sunny days to enjoy all this splendor. We reluctantly left Paihai to start our travels south - next stop Rotorau.

Please note - since we were having such an amazing time in New Zealand we decided to extend our visit here and changed our overall travel itinerary accordingly. The revised dates are noted on our first posting 'Where We are Going" for your reference.