Paihia/Bay of Islands — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

Well, you may be happy to hear that you’ll soon see the very last waterfall we visited on this trip. Unfortunately it was a cloudy day, so we didn’t get a chance to see its namesake rainbows…

… but Rainbow Falls did put on a pretty good show -

There was some nice greenery, as well as basalt columns (yay!) -

Our next stop was in Kerikeri, where New Zealand’s oldest stone building still stands (from 1836), and it has been a continuously operating store since then -

Nearby is the oldest surviving building in New Zealand, the Kemp House (1822) -

These were built as part of the Kerikeri Mission Station, established by the Church Missionary Society from England. Interestingly, the local Maoris accepted the missionaries peacefully (as a means to obtain guns) and protected them from other warring tribes, while the missionaries accepted the protection and recognized that they were to be cooperative members in this new land, and not conquerors.

We settled in Paihia for a few days to enjoy the Bay of Islands…

… where we opted to hike rather than take a cruise -

First we hiked through “bush” as they call it here..

… crossing a few streams by balancing on rocks…

… before ambling along a bay -

The path started getting interesting then…

… and sometimes you don’t want this interesting -

It was essentially straight up, as in rock-climbing, but with a guide rail to help when the natural rock didn’t provide big enough hand or foot holds for novice (old) climbers. We were definitely happy to make it to the top -