Paihia Ranches - Reviews and Rates

I'm spending the last week of my trip in Paihia, in the Bay of Islands. Its north of Auckland a bit. So far, its been sunny every day and the temp has been great. Mostly I've just been hanging on the beach or walking around the area a bit. But I did get out for a round of golf at the Waitangi Golf Club the other day. Started out pretty bad, 22 t...

Waitangi just north of Piahia is the place where the Waitangi Treaty was written and first signed in 1840 between the government of Queen Victoria and local Maori chiefs... For some reason the blog wants to put the dot for Waitangi in the middle of the southern ocean so I have given up on trying to make two entries.

Thursday 2 October Paihia S 35° 17.4' E 174° 01.2' An interesting dawn chorus greeted my first morning as a camper in New Zealand. No idea what most of it was, but later in the forest I thought I heard the melodious cry of the kokako. [Later correction: I was going on duff info associated with a recording I heard; will update this again when I g...

Finally i booked a bus tour with Stray, not really happy with bustours but for the limited time and the lack of liftoffers i'll be on the bus the next two months. We went with a mini van with three people into direction Cape Reinga. The guide told us alot about New Zealand and how it was formed and what the people on the bank notes mend to NZ be...

En Nueva Zelanda hay pocas líneas de autobús y menos aún de tren. Lo habitual es usar coches de alquiler pero, claro, para un trayecto de 200 kilómetros, alquilar un coche durante cuatro días parecía algo excesivo. Después de cinco horas de trayecto en uno de los dos únicos autobuses del día y tras haber parado en todos los pueblos entre Aucklan...

Yesterday Kayla and I did the kayak tour of the bay. It was chilly getting into the kayak, sticking your feet in the water and all! We went around the main island off paihia beach (that is not the official name, it is some complicated maori name), where we stopped on a beach for a cup of tea and to search for some shells. Our guide, Rick, showed...

Did a bus tour of the North part of the North Island. was really good. We drove along 90 Mile Beach (yes on the bus on the beach!) (and its not achually 90 miles, its about 65) Then we did sandboarding and that was really cool. We were going down this massive dune that took like 10 minutes to climb up to the top. It was well over 45 degrees aswe...

It's evening now, about 7:31 PM and my last entry was this morning from Mangonui; I had been attaching more pictures when the power went out due to the rain. Here's how the day progressed: We drove to Cape Reinga--the place we were most looking forward to on this vacation, but especially me... The rain was horizontal and we were geared from head...

After a few days back at Jack's place I got my next adventure planned out. Jack has a collegue in the kayaking industry in the northland that needed some help with a trip. Turns out, I was the guy that was going to help. Mark, Jack's collegue, lives in Paihia in the Bay of Islands on the east coast. The Bay of Islands is supposed to be one of th...

Well its bucketing it down again - pretty much the same as yesterday! We had hope to go sea kayaking around the Bay with a couple of Maori guys but with the weather no chance. Spent the morning just mooching, and dodging rain!! Not much at all really. Will decided upon a road trip again for the afternoon so we jumped in the car and headed off to...