After saying goodbye to the young Dutch couple pitched up next to us, we headed towards Paihia, a small resort town on the Bay of Islands to see about booking a day out on a boat for tomorrow. The Bay of Islands is a kiwi tourist trap and also the Brits have bought up a lot of the local property to use as holiday homes. We reserve a spot for tomorrow’s Dolphin Spotter cruise and journey out of town, round the coast to a DOC site for tramping (walking). It is possible to walk your way up to the top of the peninsula, Cape Brett, and camp at a DOC trekking hut, but that takes 6 hours each way so we opt for a gentler 1 hour 15 min walk over the crest of the hill to the charming secluded beach of Whangamumu Bay where we can also see the remains of a whaling station. The concrete bunker style buildings were where the whale’s carcass was chopped up and the blubber, oil and meat extracted. It’s a much quieter place now and our only company is a few daytrippers who’ve paddled ashore from their yacht anchored in the bay. This is the only other way of accessing these bays aside from walking. Having completed our exertion for the day we speed off to a campsite further down the peninsula at Bland Bay, which is not as it’s name suggests. It’s a very pretty beach with picturesque craggy islands which are perfect against the setting sun.
