Day 4: Waitangi again, Paihia & Russell

Today the rain really set in, so any self drive trip further north up the peninsula towards Cape Reinga got knocked on the head pretty early. Instead, we drove the 3 kms back to Waitangi Treaty Grounds to visit the main museum, that showed the history of the country from around the declaration of independence through the Treaty of Waitangi and on to modern day. Very interesting. After that we headed back to Paihia stopping on the way at Haruru Falls which are just 5 minutes from Paihia, and lookout over the river that leads down Waitangi.

From there we drove back into the main drag, found an op shop to get a better rain jacket for Paul, and a bakery for some lunch, before heading back to the apartment for a rest and to wait hopefully for a break in the wet weather.

About 2:30pm we roused ourselves and walked down to the jetty to see if ferries were still going to Russell, which they were and we caught the 3:00pm ferry over to that village on the other side of the Bay. We wandered around there not finding any op shops unfortunately, but we did find a cemetery where we looked at the gravestones, and a supermarket to buy a freezer bag to take our cold food stuff with us tomorrow. Then we found a pub where we had a couple of games of pool and then dinner.

We were aiming to catch the 7pm ferry back to Paihia but by this time the rain and wind had started to pick up a lot more and the ferry never showed up. After a quick look on Facebook we discovered they had all been cancelled for the evening and we ended up racing through the rain to catch a bus that we discovered waiting back at the start of the jetty.

The bus took us the long way round the peninsula via the vehicle ferry which was further along the sheltered side of the Bay, so was still running. We ended up back at Paihia jetty about 8pm and got soaked hot-footing it back the 1km to the apartment.

Not the day we had originally planned at all, with the ending definitely an unexpected journey, but fun nonetheless.Read more