A couple of hours north of Auckland is Paihia and the fantastic Bay of Islands. Our primary reason for enjoying this part of the world is New Zealand Cycle trails. The Twin Coast trail has 14kms of rail trail converted but it was so cool. The location is near several Maori tribal areas and the community blessed the trail with statues of their own. One of the most unexpected things was we met another couple who were geocaching and they showed us how. How nice and friendly they were and David and I have a new component to our travel and cycling.
New Years is spent with a Busker festival in town followed by news year fireworks.
The bay of islands, as I indicated before, has many tribes in that region. It is also the location of the tribes signed a treaty with Britain. The treaty house is now a cultural centre and they had an excellent overview of the tribal lifestyle, song and dance, boats and history. David had his picture taken with one of the guys. One of my friends aptly believed them to be brothers by different mothers. See the resemblance?
