Days 9&10 Kerikeri to Orongo Bay
Friday(day 9) was a rest day. I only went as far as the Hunting and Fishing store in the town to buy a new sleeping bag liner as I had managed to tear mine nearly in half. An excellent meal in the Wharepuke restaurant in the evening and I was ready for the off on Saturday morning.
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| Looking back to Kerikeri |
The weather looked good in the morning but there were showers about including a very heavy one at midday.
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| Forest track |
It was easy walking today mainly on gravel roads, some were forest tracks with no traffic and others ordinary gravel roads with few vehicles.
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| Logging cleared a lot of land |
The scenery was delightful with some good long views as there had been extensive logging operations. This was nearly all commercial forest with only a few bits of bush in the wetter places.
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| Approaching the coast |
I arrived on the coast road at Waitangi Golf course and a short distance further down was the Waitangi Treaty Grounds which is where the agreement was signed between the British Crown and the Mauri people that was the begining of New Zealand as we now know it, even though there is still an ongoing argument about what the documents actually mean.
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| Waitangi Treaty Grounds |
By the time I reached Paihea the rain which had been threatening for a while descended in torrents. I was quite close to the pier where there was a convenient pub/restaurant so I nipped in for a coffee.
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| Rain starting at Paihea |
The campsite I was aiming for was only a short distance away so rather than waste the afternoon I took the ferry to Russell, the old whaling settlement.
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| Russell, main street |
When it was a whaling station Russell was well known for it's lawlessness and everything that goes with that and was aptly called a hell hole.
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| Hell Hole Cafe |
It is now a very neat and tidy tourist attraction as are most of the other towns around the Bay of Islands. The old wooden buildings were well maintained but the place had the feeling of an old cowboy movie one horse town.
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| Cannon at Russell harbour |
The path from Russell climbed up to a lookout point at 115m before descending back to the road and around the coast to the campsite at Orongo.
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| View from the lookout |
There are Kiwi around the campsite, birds not people, and I was told that they could be seen when it got dark if you used a red light. So I spent some time at the forest edge and while they could be heard I'm sorry to say that I didn't see one.
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| Another lookout view |
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