A Week in the Bay of Islands

This was the week that I was working, so we were looking for a place we could stay put but that would give Jim plenty to entertain himself with.  Scuba diving was the perfect idea — and we looked into going to either Fiji or Bali, but in the end decided that it would be just as fun to stay in New Zealand and head to the lands north of Auckland: The Northlands.  We found a hotel right in Paihia (Breakwater Hotel), nothing fancy, but good enough for our needs.  

We got to the airport early and got to skip the lines because of Jim’s status and then went to the Star Alliance Lounge.  It was my time in an airport lounge and I was shocked by the delicious (free!) spread and comfortable surroundings.  I felt a little uncomfortable about the whole thing, like a real imposter, but I quickly grew accustomed to it, and started looking forward to our future trips!

We had tried to rent a car at our usual Hertz but they were sold out, so we took our chances on a very cheap car through VIP Car (Auto Union). How different could it be? It was totally fine but really funny — it had no hubcaps and close to 200,000 km on it.  And it looked like we were driven to a junkyard to pick it up.

We stopped at a restaurant called Aubergine just north of Auckland for lunch and then drove nearly 4 hours to Paihia. We walked through the small town looking for dinner and ended up at Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack.  Jim was hoping to get a Jimmy Jack’s t-shirt, but they said they didn’t think they’d sell them.   We picked up a few groceries for the week and went to bed after an episode of the Extraordinary Attorney Woo.

Lots more details to add here:

• Jim went scuba diving twice, including to the wreck of the Greenpeace's boat, the Rainbow Warrior (sunk by French saboteurs because of it's protests of French ships)
• Liz worked for a couple days, catching up before we headed to Australia
• We went on some nice hikes, including to a waterfall, and had an amazing meal after it
• We also visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds to see where the treaty was signed that formed New Zealand