Rotarua back to Auckland and onward to Russell - The HELL HOLE of the Pacific!

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Having travelled everywhere in New Zealand but north of Auckland, we head for Russell. A four hour drive plus an eight minute ferry brings us to this wee place of three streets. A slice of heaven right on the waterfront. On route, the landscape becomes subtropical with deep emerald green trees and pastures. There are hillsides covered in toe toe (pampass) grass. The golf course in Whangarei is perfectly manicured and enormous dairy factories are roadside.

Russell provides two days of walks, coffee, and sitting by the bay watching the world go by. We did tour the 1842 Pompallier Mission printing press building. Chris is asked to run the machine and create a 'first impression' of a page for the Maori books. Originally, there were 40,000 books printed at the mission, complete with binding, and a tannery for creating hand tooled book covers. An arduous task.

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