Admiral's View Lodge Bay of Islands

... woolworths - I thought they had all closed) with pasta and soup and stuff we could cook on our mini hob.<br><br>We then visited Huarua waterfalls and set off West towards the Kauri forests. On the way we stopped at Kerikeri where the oldest stone built building in New Zealand is. The oldest stone building is actually only about 150 years old and not particularly interesting (rectangular and ...

We drove into Paihia for the Bay of Islands boat trip this morning, departed at 9am &amp; headed out to see the "Hole in the Rock" formation. On the way, we came across two groups of dolphins, both of which had young babies with them. Unfortunately, this meant that the group was not able to swim with the dolphins but it was still pretty cool to watch them.<br><br>Unfortunately, the water was too rough &amp; the swell too big to take the boat ...

... spend more time in Auckland and head immediately up to the Bay of Islands. It was a pretty drive up and we got a few laughs from the cars behind us, including a cop. We decided to stay in Paihia, which is the main resort area, but it's still fairly small and lowkey. Well, probably not as lowkey as usual considering we were there for New Years and many families are here on their ...

... nice weather most of the time.We arrived at Paihia and it was quite lively and looked really nice. We took some photo's but it was starting to get dark so we decided to head back to the beach house in Ahipara as it was going to be a long drive back along them good old winding roads. We will definitely have to go back to Paihia at some point and spend some more time there.

Friday 13th June I had lots of little jobs to do today that I couldn't get done in little old Coromandel, so I just stayed in Auckland sorting those out today. New phone, that sort of thing. When I checked my post at the hostel I was gutted to find that my application for a new passport to replace my stolen one had been delayed as they rejected my passport photos (from a passport photo booth...) for being too blurry. I sent them some new ones but due to the ...

... and mango pavlova for desert. It was a little sad to know our week of `holidaying´ at the hotel was coming to an end but we still had two days before we said goodbye to Tony. The following morning after packing we said our goodbyes to Connie and Malcom and made our way down to Orewa (just north of Auckland on the east coast for the night). We stopped off for lunch on the way and arrived into Orewa mid afternoon. After checking into a motel we made the most of the sun lying on the ...

... so cute. They have such sweet little faces, like little teddy bears. It had a long tail and Dean thinks that was what he saw running off with our pan bag that night when we were in the Blue Mountains. We have had a lovely time here, it is a beautiful place with fantastic views around every corner. The weather was hot and sunny most of the time but we had a few rain showers. Thankfully, our little back awning over our bed stood up to the rain and proved it's waterproof - we stayed dry.

(Originally published at http://www.troysgonewalkabout.com)<br>< br>It was a little tough deciding on whether to spend the day sailing around the Bay of Islands on a catamaran or taking a bus trip to Cape Reinga and Ninety Mile Beach, but in the end I chose the day sail. Not long out of Paihia we crossed paths with a pod of dolphins and a few of us keen folk jumped in with the intention of having a bit of a ...