gardenofwine.com

Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, North Island, New Zealand. 671km

Click Here for Pictures

We spent two days in the bay of islands, a beautiful bay with lots of islands dotting the horizon. Our first day was miserable because of the rain. The second was sunny and fun.

We woke up to a drizzly Saturday morning and drove from Hararu Falls to Russell. We took a 10 minute car ferry across from Opua to save us half an hour drive. We drove up to Flagstaff point for an attempt at a view of the bay. Lo and behold the sun came out just as we pulled into the parking lot. Our luck did not last for more than 10 minutes and we had to return to the car after a few short moments at the viewpoint.

We pulled into the Top 10 campground and had lunch in the camp kitchen, which was very clean, spacious and well organized. It also had a corner full of kiddy books and toys, so it was a perfect solution for a rainy day. The kids kept fighting over who gets to play with the toy stroller walking the teddy bear around.

After an hour of failed attempts getting Orr and Shir to take a nap, we realized that they have gotten so used to falling asleep in their car seats while we drive that there is no chance they’ll sleep in a static RV. We were starting to get stir-crazy. At 5pm we decided to go into Russell, rain or no rain. We put on our jackets and walked 10 minutes into the town center.

Russell is the oldest European town in New Zealand. There are a few old historic buildings, but it was hard to see anything through the rain. We stood under the roof of a Thai restaurant for 20 minutes as the rain got stronger and stronger, debating what to do. Finally it let up and we returned to the camp kitchen to prepare supper. The sun actually did come out for a bit in the late afternoon and I was able to grill some food outside in a real BBQ. We went to sleep with our fingers crossed that today will be a better day.

And it was. I got up at 7 to clear blue skies and booked a 3 hour cruise to see the islands. We took a relatively short cruise because the kids lose interest very quickly. Our voyage had 2 highlights. The first was sighting dolphins in the bay’s waters. The second was passing through “Hole in the Rock”, a natural arch at Cape Brett. The scenes along the way were beautiful, with lush green islands dropping precipitously into the turquoise bay waters.

We returned to the dock at Russell just in time for lunch and headed to the Thai place from yesterday. We dined outside, enjoying the sun and a slight breeze. The food was quite good too. With full stomachs we began our drive back to the Auckland direction.

The first part was a beautiful and slow drive hugging the Pacific Ocean. It took us 2 hours to get to Whangarei were we spotted a playground and let the children have a go.

The next segment to Orewa could have been much shorter but in the last 30km we got caught in weekend traffic jams. All of Auckland returning home from the North (Just like Moza”sh in Israel around Zomet HaMovil). We reached this campground after 7pm. Laundry, another playground, quick supper and it was already close to 9pm.

We bathed the kids in the RV shower for the first time and it was quite a good experience compared to my expectations. The only bummer is that the floor remains wet and if you need to step in to pee in the middle of the night…

Tomorrow we are heading towards the Coromandel Pennisula, but we have a pit stop (literally) at the rental depot to fix a few problems that we have discovered with the RV. Is it coincidence or do we always get the lemons? The fresh water tank is leaking. The overhead A/C – Heater is not working. 2 of the upper cupboard doors have a spring closing mechanism that broke. And a few other issues. Let’s hope we don’t need to waste the whole day on this tomorrow.

Good Night,

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 4:24 am and is filed under Big Trip, New Zealand. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.