Northern New Zealand

From Auckland, we headed off to the Bay of Islands and spent 3 nights in Paihia.  We really needed this "down time" as we have been moving almost on a daily basis.  This is a lovely area, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay.


 From Paihia we headed off on a drive to Kawakawa to see these toilets.  We didn't know what to expect, but they were pretty neat.

 They are called the Hundertwasser toilets and are mosaics with embedded bottles etc.

 Pretty cool, eh, and no charge to use them!

 Outside the toilets, coming down the main street, was this old tourist train.  We didn't take it, but it was nice to see it go by.

 This was the outside of those toilets.

We also went on a walk through glow-worm caves. They are owned by a Maori family and have been in the family for 15 generations.  Our guide was the great grandson of the original tour developers.  It was fascinating and he gave a great tour.  We couldn't take any photos inside, unfortunately, but had a hike up over the top and back into the parking lot.  There were very strange rock formations in the area.

 From there we headed to Kerikeri to see the oldest store in New Zealand.  Built in the early 1800's.

 The area was very pretty, in fact, we have really enjoyed our drives in NZ so far.  Lots of contrasting greens.

 Another view of the store.  There were also some other old building nearby and a lovely stream where people were swimming.

 This was another waterfall nearby.  Very pretty scenery.

 Today, we took a small ferry over to Russell.  What a quaint little town and we were very fortunate to show up at the time they were staging their "theatre".  It was all acted out in the street and moved from venue to venue.

 It was portraying the historical side of Russell, with duels, pirates, ruffians, brothels, strumpets, etc.  It was very well done and entertaining!

 Here the constable has found 'grog'!

 NZ is the land of sails...they say 1/3 of the population has access to a boat, and 1/5 of the population owns one.