Island Hopping - Blogabond

By way of the sweet little fishing harbour at Omaha Cove in the town of Leigh, which was strangely reminiscent of parts of the southern Cornish coast, and a chilly snorkelling session with some huge snapper at the Goat Island Marine Reserve, we made our way to Paihia: gateway to the beautiful Bay of Islands. There we booked ourselves on a half day cruise which motored around the scattered archipelago telling us about the past and present of the islands - from Russell, the first permanent European settlement in New Zealand to Motuarohia, where a repressed and bullied Maori servant retaliated by going on a killing rampage - splitting his fellow servant's head with an axe and then murdering his employer's whole family, to another spot (Moturua?) where a fabulously wealthy Kiwi has built himself the ultimate weekend retreat, with a gadget filled underground layer worthy of Batman, and a passageway hollowed out of the headland so that guests arriving at the shared jetty in the adjoining bay will not be inconvenienced by the two minute walk over the top!

Although the weather was not great (setting the theme for our entire time in New Zealand) the trip was gorgeous, and whet our appetite for the increasingly lovely sights to come.

written by

Alex Kent on December 1, 2007 from Paihia, New Zealand

from the travel blog: On the Varieties of Nature

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