February 1st, 2024

Finally land !

We woke up today anchored in Waitanga in the Bay of Islands New Zealand. It was a beautiful clear blue skies day. We did have to tender in and it was about a 25 minute tender ride. We did a bus tour which was included for 2.5 hours and took us to a few scenic places. One of the places it took us to was a public bathroom that was designed by Austrian born architect Friedsreich Hundertwasser in the Gaudi style in 1997. The town where these public bathrooms are is small so not even sure why they have public bathrooms.

The signs depicting the women’s rooms rest room from the mens restroom.

Most of the bathroom was tiled and very colorful. It was weird to do an excursion that highlighted a public bathroom.

An original stone house from the 1800s A tribal Maori canoe

We did a quick 10 minute walk to see Rainbow falls which ended the tour.

Rainbow falls

Our waterfall selfie

The tour took us back to where the tender dropped us off around 1:15 and we walked the 1.3 miles into town along the waterfront. Once we got to the town, which was quite small, we took a 20 minute ferry ride to a town across the bay called Russell. Russell is the first seaport and the first European settlement in New Zealand. It is a quaint little town with about 2 streets and very little traffic. It was also the first capital of New Zealand.

The oldest surviving church in New Zealand. It is an Anglican church built in 1835. They had a cool graveyard dating back to the early 1800s.

We took the ferry back after walking around for an hour and the tide had gone out so we were able to walk the beach the whole way back. We found a cool mural that we were unable to see walking into town due to the high tide.

Kathy in the right hand corner.

Tons of shells on the beach once the tide went out.

We took the last tender back to the boat around 5pm and even though the temperatures were in the 70s in the sunshine it was pretty hot. We took showers and went up to Explorers lounge to watch sail away and get a Kathy special from Aaron which is a double aperol spritz. We also had time to catch up with several of our new friends to share experiences. We also met another couple from Tallahassee although they don’t live in Tallahassee now. There are 2 other couples though from Tallahassee and we have met one, Judy and Jim but not the other. Judy is learning Mah Jongg. I find it such a small world that Tallahassee has a population of 200,000 and on a boat that holds 1000 we have 6 people who live in Tallahassee.

Looks like 2 shark fins leaving the Bay of Islands.

We had dinner in the world cafe watching the sunset which did not set until 8:30pm, with Michael and Kathy and sharing stories about the day.

Sunset

We are headed to Auckland and it is 150 miles so we are going very slow. I looked out the window at one point and we were going so slow it looked like we had stopped. We will be in Auckland for 3 days which will be a nice change.