Island Time

Our retirement on Island Time as liveaboards.

Island Time crew goes to New Zealand
Part 9

New Zealand Days 4, 5 and 6

We left Whangarie and headed for Paihia in the Bay of Islands. (S 35 degrees 17.4 min; E 174 degrees 01.1 minutes). The Bay of Islands is a large bay filled with many islands both large and small. On our first full day in Paihia we went on a tour of the islands aboard a large motor vessel. Of course along the way we looked for dolphins. We did find one pod of dolphins. The cruise was advertised as swimming with dolphins but the pod had babies with them and the rules say no swimming with the animals if they have babies with them (I am sure that I would not go in any way as both the air and water temperatures were cold).

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Paihai Wharf

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Paihai Harbor

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Dolphin swimming around the boat

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The Dolphins swim next to the bow of the boat so that they can rub themselves on the bow of boat to scratch an itch or to remove parasites attached to their skin – There was recently in the news that a sailboat that sailed into a pod of whales and was sunk by a whale attack - one of the theories is that the whale was not attacking but rubbing his back on the boat.

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Cruising boat with an anchorage all to himself – This is still spring and the boats that winter further north in the Polynesian islands are just starting to move south into New Zealand. Paihia is a check in point and the boats are starting to arrive here. In another month or so private anchorages will be harder to find

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The Hole in the Rock at the end of the Peninsula north east of the
Bay of Islands. The boat will motor thru the hole

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In the “Hole”

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The Sleeping Princess rock formation

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Americans are everywhere – the Western Novel writer Zane Grey frequented the islands for the wonderful fishing he found in New Zealand He established the resort on Otehei Bay on Urupukapuka Island. The resort is currently being renovated.

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From the top of Zane Grey’s island – the yellow boat is our tour boat

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That evening we went on Darryl’s Dinner Cruise up the Waitangi River on the vessel Ratanui. This was a leisurely 2.5 hour cruise up the river to Haruru falls. Dinner starts with prawns and mussels, breads and dips followed by a dinner of T-bone steak. The boat was to be at the falls at the time we eat dinner. However, tides conspired against us. We started our trip at low tide and came to several bumpy stops on our way up the shallow river. As the tide came in we moved further up river finally making it to the falls in the dark. No one seemed to mind.

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As our campground was 6 km our town we decided that we did not want to drive after our night our with Darryl so we wanted to take a taxi to town however the taxis were all busy so this is what we rode to town in

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Darryl’s dinner cruise boat

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Approaching the Waitangi River

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Food prep area, bar and helm of Ratanui

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Waitangi River

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