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Published: January 25th 2007
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Bay of Islands
View from Flagstaff hill in Russell Ooops... we didn't get round to finishing this at Christmas, so here's the last instalment from New Zealand...
West Auckland From Raglan we drove north, skirting Auckland and stopping at a few wineries for tasting en route to Helensville, a convenient place to stop for the night with nearby mountain biking for Rod.
Helensville was a bland little town with no campsites, so we stopped at a nearby, substandard campsite with its own substandard thermal baths. Before we moved on the next day, we drove out of town to the mountain biking area...cue Rod's update below….
[Bikers’ corner: Just a quickie this time to finish. Woodhill is the major biking area in the Auckland region, so I picked up a permit and spent a few hours following the longest of the set routes (rather, trying to follow it - the signage and maps left a little to be desired!) The trails are very sandy, so there was some inventive use of astro turf to hold steep sections in place, and quite a bit of North Shore style wooden stunts. Clearly a well developed biking spot, with some fun challenging stuff and a whole maze of trails. Not
The Flagstaff
Up-down-up-down and so on... a bad way to finish.]
The Bay of Islands We headed from Helensville to the Bay of Islands on the north west fringe of the North Island and took the short car ferry crossing to tiny Russell. We'd planned a few days there before heading to the northern tip of the North Island to Cape Reinga and Ninety Mile Beach. But it soon became clear that our batteries had finally died, so we scrapped those plans and instead did not-much-at-all in Russell for 4 days.
NZ towns and cities haven't made much of an impression on us, but Russell proved to be the exception: it's pretty, charming and historic too. Russell was the scene of much early wrangling between the British and the Maoris in the days before the Treaty of Waitangi (the founding document of modern NZ) was signed in nearby, er, Waitangi. The Flagstaff which flew the British flag on the hill overlooking Russell was brought down by the Maoris on several occasions. A replica flagstaff now stands on the hill and the most energetic thing we did in Russell was take a short walk up the hill to take a look at it.
Russell
The oldest church in NZ Other than that, we splurged on a lovely dinner to celebrate our 4 year 'anniversary', drank a lot of coffee, enjoyed the rare treat of finding free wireless and wasted far too much time watching the third test of the Ashes....nuff said about the latter.
Back down to Auckland We finally dragged ourselves away from the oasis that was Russell and drove south again towards Auckland, stopping for a final night in our trusty campervan at Goat Island Beach. Since Goat Island became a marine reserve, it's developed a reputation for the best snorkelling and diving in NZ. Even on our short walk around the rocks next to the beach we could see that the crystal clear water was teeming with huge snappers.
Last Stop in NZ: Auckland Well, this is it, the big city NZ-style. Auckland seemed pleasant enough, although the rain tipped down for the 3 days we were there. We reluctantly returned Eddie the van, but enjoyed staying under a real roof for the first time in 2 months!
As had become standard practice during our last week in NZ, we basically did b*gger all: wandered around, watched some people
brave the Sky Jump from Auckland’s Sky Tower, slept, ate….and bemoaned the lack of festive spirit evident in NZ!
Homeward Bound Soon enough, it was time to begin our epic journey home. A 10.5 hour flight from Auckland to Hong Kong, a fatigued-but-serene 2 hour stop at Hong Kong airport, and another 13.5 hour flight to the nightmare that was Heathrow.
Despite our exhaustion we were a little bit giddy at arriving back in the UK…until we arrived at the British Airways check-in desk to find out that our flight to Manchester had been cancelled due to the fog.
Heathrow was chaos... we just about got the last seats on the one bus BA put on to Manchester. To top it off, we left our box of wine on the coach - 100 pounds worth of fine New Zealand wine that we'd carefully chosen on our travels.... We were gutted, but at least we got home rather than camping in Heathrow like thousands of other people!
Christmas at home was great. We hope you all had a very merry Christmas!
water was teeming with huge snappers.
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