Paihia, Bay of Islands, North Island, New Zealand

8th November – 11th November 2017

After arriving at the bus stop in Auckland, we boarded our first Intercity bus at 4, ready to head towards Paihia, in the Bay of Islands for a few days. During the journey, we both felt a bit travel sick, as the journey was very windy, down the narrow roads on the mountainsides. As pretty as the views were, it wasn’t possible to enjoy them as much when we were on the bus, which was a shame. The journey went reasonably quick though, and we arrived in Paihia just after 8.

When we got off the bus, it took us a minute or so to get our bearings, before we set off towards the hostel. It was only a ten-minute walk, but when you’ve got bags hanging off you in every direction, it seems to take a little longer. We eventually got to the hostel, and checked in. We got lost on the way to our room, but we found it eventually and managed to dump our bags.

As we were both hungry, once we had dropped our stuff off and locked away our valuables, we head towards the kitchen to cook our dinner – the first cooked meal of our trip. When we got to the kitchen, we couldn’t believe how many people were in there, it was so crowded. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves at first, so we just sat down on the sofas and watched the chaos. After about five minutes, we decided that we needed to start to make a move on dinner, otherwise we wouldn’t be eating for a long time. As soon as we saw a small gap, we moved towards the cooker. We grabbed the pots and pans that we needed and I started to cook the sausages. Gradually little bits started to become free for us to use but there was very little space for us to move about, so making a sausage pasta dish took an awful lot longer than it should have done.

When we finally got to eat our dinner, it tasted very good – it was a great first effort. We had made enough for two meals, so once we had finished eating, we put the other half of the food into a Tupperware tub and cleaned up all of the dishes.

After dinner, we didn’t really have much else to do, and there were a lot of cliques in the hostel, as a lot of the people work in the area and are staying at the hostel long term, so we went to the room. Our two roommates seemed to have the same idea, as they were already in bed when we got there, so once we were ready for the bed and had packed our day bag for the next day, we went to bed too.

The next morning, the alarm went off at 6 and it was a struggle to get out of bed. We did though and strangely enough the other guy in our room was getting up and ready too, so it made it a little easier to not have to creep around as much. We got ourselves ready, and had some Nutella and bagels for breakfast, before walking back towards the bus stop, for our day’s activity.

Although the bus should have arrived at 7.10, it didn’t actually arrive until around 7.20, as it had been doing other pick-ups first. When we got on the bus, for our trip up to Cape Reigna, it was already packed full of people, but luckily we got the last two seats together. Once everyone had been collected from different spots, we set off on our journey further up the island.

On the way, the driver/ guide told us lots of different information about the towns we passed, starting with Paihia – the starting point of the tour. Paihia is only a small town with a population of 1700, but in the summer months, so between now and the end of April, the population rises to around 4000 due to tourism. In my opinion, it is a cute little seaside town, in the Bay of Islands and I can see why it is such a big hit with tourism.

We drove through Waitangi, which is where the Maori leader and the queen signed the treaty for the British travellers to be able to settle in New Zealand and live under common laws with the Maori people. On the 6^th February each year, Waitangi Day is celebrated to remember the treaty being signed.

We carried on going, driving through the hilly green land, in the north of New Zealand. The north island is mostly made up of dormant volcanoes. Due to the land being formed by the lava of the volcanoes, the land is extra fertile, which explains why everything in New Zealand is so green. The Maori people live more up in the north island, where it is warm (supposedly) and where they don’t encounter any snow.

Our first stop of the day, was a kauri (pronounced ‘kody’) tree forest. Currently, only 2% of the forest population are kauri trees, and these trees can only be found as far down as the Coromandel peninsula. They are a protected tree, as too many have been cut down over the years or have been ruined by animals introduced into New Zealand, such as rats and possums. The trees initially grow up to be tall, before growing out. The kauri tree produces a gum resin, which has been tested by many people over the years to find a use for it; it was eventually discovered that it can be used for things such as varnishes and paints. The resin is produced to protect the tree from any diseases. The trees that we saw were only ‘young’ trees at 400 – 1000 years old. In 1990, a boardwalk was built for Queen Elizabeth’s visit; although she didn’t actually walk around, she did visit it and say it was ‘very nice’.

A Polynesian man was the first to find the lands of New Zealand. His boat came onto the land at Taipa – a place along the coast above the Bay of Islands. When he found the land, it was completely covered by a cloud, so he called in the land under the long white cloud. On his journey, he named lots of different places as he travelled around the country, until he eventually settled. When he got older, the man decided to move back home, and when he did, he told his people of the land he found under the long white cloud. After he had died, some of his people took his original canoe and travelled to find New Zealand. When they found it, they travelled in to the same place that the first man did: Taipa. The men were part of the Ngapuhi (pronounced Narpoei) Tribe, some of which are still around today.

Our second stop of the day, was the Ninety Mile Beach, which is actually only 55 miles long. When the Maoris travelled down the beach on horses, it took them three days. They worked out that a horse can travel thirty miles in a day, so calculated it to be ninety miles long. They didn’t take into consideration that the horses would move slower going across the sand. We drove along the beach for a bit of the way, but as the tide was so high, we couldn’t go all the way along without getting stuck, so we had to come off sooner than planned. Before we came off the beach, we were able to get off the bus and have a walk around. We took some photos and climbed up into the sand dunes, before we had to get back on the bus to carry on.

We drove about an hour further after the Ninety Mile Beach, to Cape Reinga Lighthouse – the northernmost point in New Zealand. On the way, we both had a nap because of the early start, but we were energised enough when we got there to do the mini walk. It was about ten minutes down to get to the lighthouse, where we took some photos. One guy that was passing offered to take a picture of the both of us, which we thought was great, but when we checked it afterwards, he had completely missed the lighthouse off the photo and had used us to cover it up! We were not impressed, but thought it was kind of funny. We had an hour altogether to spend at the lighthouse, so after we had taken some photos, we started to walk back to the bus, via a viewpoint up a hill.

Back on the bus, we only had a short drive until our next stop, which was sand boarding. As we were both quite tired from the early wake up, we were both being quite miserable about it and couldn’t be bothered doing it at first. I then decided that we needed to snap out of the mood and have some fun, so we did. When we pulled up, we had to grab a board each and head up the sand dune. I remembered how hard it was to climb the sand dune last time, so I wasn’t looking forward to that part, but when we got to the top, it was worth it. We only had time for two goes each, mostly because we were so slow at getting up the sand dune though.

By the time we had finished sand boarding, I was so hungry – it was about 2.30pm at this point and we hadn’t had any lunch yet. We had about an hour drive back down the island towards our lunch stop, with a short stop just before so that the driver could clean the sand off the bus. I tried to nap along the way, as it was over an hour’s drive, so that I could pass the time a bit quicker.

We finally arrived at our ‘lunch stop’ at around 4.45 and I felt like I was wasting away. We had ordered fish and chips to share and we had more than enough. We sat on some bar stools and enjoyed our food, overlooking the Manganui Harbour.

After ‘lunch’ we got back on the bus to head back towards Paihia. It took us just over an hour to get back to the bus stop, and when we did get back, we had a little wander around the town before heading back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel, we had a little bit of time to chill out, but we didn’t want any dinner, as we had only just eaten the fish and chips. We started to research the next part of our trip, as we didn’t have anything booked for after we left Paihia, so we wanted to look some places up. As everyone at the hostel was getting together and having a drink and being quite noisy, we decided to go back out to the town and have a drink in one of the bars along the front. We didn’t stay out for very long though; after one drink, we started to walk back.

When we got back, we did a little more research and booked some buses and hostels, before going to bed.

As we had no plans the next morning, we were able to have a lie in. The guy that was sharing the room with us got up early to check out, so that woke me up, but I soon went back to sleep afterwards.

After spending most of the morning planning the next couple of days – which was kind of stressful – we got ourselves up and ready at around 11.30. We made a late breakfast, before leaving the hostel to go and explore the little town of Paihia.

As we didn’t really have a plan, we just started walking towards the centre. When we got there, we stumbled across an arts and crafts market, which we had a look around, before walking towards the main street. It was a little bit colder than I was expecting, so we decided to find a café first, to get a hot drink to warm up a little. We ended up back in the same place as the night before and we both ordered hot chocolates and a chocolate brownie.

Once we had finished our drinks, we went for a wander around the town. It didn’t take us very long to walk up the main street and down the side alleys but it was a cute little town with some nice shops. We enquired about a boat trip around the islands to see some dolphins, but the information man said that the weather wouldn’t be good enough for us to do that, which was a shame.

For lunch, we only wanted a light snack, so we found a different café and shared some food in there, before finishing the afternoon off with an ice cream sat overlooking the bay. We stayed there for a little while but it was a little chilly, so we gradually made our way back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel, we had the rest of the afternoon to chill out and catch up on organising some things. We re-heated the rest of the pasta from the other night for dinner, before squeezing into one of our beds to watch a film, before we went to sleep. The room was full for the first time, so we had to do a lot more creeping around, bit everyone was in the same situation.

On our final morning in Paihia, I was awake before Joe, so I just lay in my bed, waiting for him to wake up. Once we were both awake, we got ourselves ready before having breakfast. After eating, we had to pack up and get ourselves ready for check-out, which we were on the minutes for, again.

After check-out, we walked into the town again. Our plan for the day was to walk to Waitangi which was about half an hour away. Waitangi is the place where the treaty was signed, so we thought it would be interesting to have a look at the place where it all happened. After a chill in the park, communal area, we started our walk.

It took us a little more than half an hour to get there, as there were flags from different countries painted on the floor along the way, so we got distracted by the game of guessing the country. It didn’t matter though because we had a fair bit of time until our bus and we were having fun. We were having that much fun, we had to remind ourselves to stop and look at the views around, as they were pretty cool too.

When we got to the treaty ground, it wasn’t quite what we expected: it had been turned into a big museum and tourist attraction, which would have cost us $80 to look around. We didn’t think it was worth it, as we didn’t have enough time to leisurely have a look, so we went to the café instead.

After having a drink, we walked back to Paihia, via the supermarket for a couple of things we needed for dinner. When we got back into the town, we went for another ice cream and sat in the park area and enjoyed it in the sunshine.

After our ice cream, we made our way back to the hostel, so that we could make some lunch before we got back on the bus. While we were making lunch, we decided to prepare dinner for the night, as we knew we wouldn’t be getting to the next hostel until after 8 and we didn’t want to have to mess around when we got there. Once all of that was prepared, we had a little bit of time to chill in the sunshine – which had finally come out – before walking back to the town to get the bus.

Paihia is a lovely little town which would have been even more beautiful if the sun came out a little bit more than it did. It was cool to be able to go up to the most northern point in New Zealand and start the trip by seeing a special landmark. I wish we could have done a boat ride to the other islands but the weather wasn’t on our side this time, so it’s something we will have to come back and do one day. For now, it’s time to have a one night stopover in Auckland before heading towards the Coromandel Peninsula.

To travel is to live, Katie x