Rainy Paihia!

(Written 05/12, 18.18)

After receieving Bhavesh in Auckland, we headed north to Paihia - "the birthplace of the country" (the place where the Maori signed the Treaty of Waitangi effectively handing New Zealand to the Europeans!). Paihia is a quaint little town that is mainly famous for the nearby Bay of Islands, so our intention was to just do the Hole in the Rock cruise and move on. But it rained and rained rained... 

Our original cruise was cancelled and rebooked for the following morning. We took a quick ferry over to Russell (another quaint town that once was the boozing central for sailors in the bay!), and pretty much just nursed a coffee for an hour in Sally's cafe before returning to Paihia! Each time I woke up that night, I heard rain. This spelt bad news for the morning's trip! Unsurprisingly we awoke to a cancellation notification in the hostel. They offered us an upgrade to a bigger boat for a longer cruise, which we accepted after rearranging our bus. Half an hour later, this cruise was cancelled! Fairly lolworthy*. Five additional hours to kill in "it's-always-rainy-in" Paihia. 

To keep a long story long, the rain faded, the sun is up, and we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon cruise around the Bay of Islands. We saw a group of about fifteen impressively large bottle-nose dolphins jumping around the boat! It was quite spectacular to see so many so close to us! The swell was still too intense to actually get to the sacred Hole in the Rock (one wave actually made the whole boat get air-time!), but no complaints as we did eventually enjoy a nice cruise around the islands and a nice materialisation of the well-known phrase "fourth time lucky".

*Lolworthy = worthy of provoking one to laugh out loud.