Our world tour Part 1

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Today had two specific faces: after a great breakfast in our beautiful lodge, we hurried to the seashore to catch "the hole in the rock" cruise. This trip basically took us to different islands situated in the Bay of Islands. Plural for island here is correct, because according to the definition they give to an island, i.e. has to be above high water level and to have a permanent vegetation, there are 144 islands (give and take). Beautiful scenary as can be seen in the attached photos. Highlight of the cruise is a visit to the "hole in the rock" situated at the far end of the bay, that, in order to get there takes you for a short time in open (Pacific Ocean) water. Open water means, tougher seas which took its toll on some of the passagers, who gave their breakfast to the fish.....

The captain of the boat entering in open waters indicated that the first country that we would encounter keeping the direction we were heading would be Chile. A lot of water in the middle!

We went on land in one of the islands to stretch our legs and take a walk and admire the views. Upon our return we had a nice lunch and parted to our new destination further north, Waipoua Lodge near the Kauri rain forest. The route to this destiny increasingly became narrower and winding, reducing speed and lenghtening our trip. Making things more complicated it started to rain heavily giving the place its true character.

For now, a brief remark on Kauri trees: these are huge trees with some characteristics as the sequoia trees in California, and can reach heights over 50 meters and can live over 2.000 years. Yes you read that correctly: two thousand years. These facts we found on the official NZ government website; locals will tell you nevertheless that Kauri trees can age over 3.000 years. Indifferently: impressive!

Tomorrow we will visit the forest and make an evening walk with a group of Māori for whom these trees have a special significance.

The lodge where we are staying (Waipoa Lodge) is a very nice place. Again, very well done and luxirous and run by very nice people. We are the only guests, which is a bit of a pity, but the company of the owners (Ian and Fran) make up for the lack of other guests.

A good thing here is that the owners serve a "a la carte" dinner, which is great, because the next village and restaurant is about 45 km away. Great food by the way.

The only drawback we have encountered here is the fact that the lodge has no mobile phone coverage and the internet is out due to a lightning strike. So we are totally of the grid and todays report will appear on a later date.

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Photos

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Hole in the rock.

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Names here are un pronouncable.

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Stretching legs

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Panorama