Sojama Road: The hell-hole of the Pacific

We started our day with a nature walk around our campsite. 80% of the trees were native to NZ. My favorite was the bottle brush tree which is apparently also known the New Zealand Christmas tree. When it blooms, its summer.

lots of cool ferns here

We left Waipoua Forest and headed south to the large-ish town of Whangarei (population 52K). We wanted to break up our drive so we ate lunch, played at a park, and headed to the Whangarei Falls. We chatted with an older woman and her adult daughter who now lived in Perth, pronounced Purr, so I had to ask her to spell it. The woman had been to Canada and Europe. She commented that she loved New Zealand because it has everything and we "all basically get along." Sounds cool.

We drove on to Russell, population 816. I suspect when summer is in full swing that number is multiplied by at least 5. Like all areas of New Zealand, it first belonged to the Maori. In the early 1800s, a treaty was signed that made it the first European settlement in NZ. Charles Darwin visited in 1835 and noted it was filled with "the refuse of society." Times have changed and Russell is now a lovely (touristy in a good way) beach town.

Instead of taking us to our campsite, the GPS took us to an amazing beach in a bay called Long beach. The sun was shining and we decided we should just stop and swim. We didn’t need wet suits. While it looks like Hawaii, the water is not warm here. It’s not far from the Antarctic. But with the sun shining, its warm enough.

After the swim we looked for a kid friendly place to eat and found an outdoor, wood-fired pizza place.

While looking for dinner down town ( a 5 minute walk from the camp site) we saw advertisements for boat tours through the islands. We chose the tour that promised dolphin sightings and a good history lesson. We also decided to do the boat tour because it was supposed to be a cloudy and slightly cooler day.

One thing has become clear as we’ve camped in mostly empty camp grounds and as we got on the large, fancy, but mostly empty tour boat: high tourist season (which I think starts in a couple of weeks here) brings large crowds. Every place we visit is ready for a lot of people. Fortunately, We haven’t had to make any advance plans. I’ll trade cloudy skies for not planning anytime.

We found a pod of dolphins swimming early in our tour. It was pretty amazing. I took about 100 pictures and then wondered why I was doing that and just watched the dolphins.

old pirate boat

They seem so friendly. The tour offered people the chance to swim with the dolphins. There are lots of rules around this. You can’t do it if there is a baby with the group. You can’t do it between 1130 and 1pm. You can’t do it if the water is too rough. I am sure there are other reasons but these were the reasons no one in our group was able to swim with the dolphins. Our guidebook thought it was a bad idea. I wasn’t into it anyway.

We visited the hole in the rock. It was a sacred site for the Maori. They went through the rock before every journey. Our boat tried to make it through but in the end the water was too rough. Many people were vomiting on the boat. I am very fortunate no one in my family gets motion sickness. We do the kids' homework while we're driving from place to place. The middle of this RV feels like a catamaran in large waves.

There are 150 islands in the bay. We saw 13 of them. We only left the boat on one of the islands for lunch. Every island was small and most had wealthy, private owners.

view during lunch

We learned a lot about the Maori and Captain James Cook who was here in the late 1700s. He named the bay and negotiated the treaty that let the Europeans settle here. He was later killed by the Hawaiians. Missionaries were also here.. naturally.

The kids participated in a dolphin drawing contest. Jack won! We were then invited to take part in an activity called boom-netting. The kids were very excited about this. Basically, there’s a net on the side of the boat. You jump in the net and the boat drags you around. I am not sure why its a thing but we did it because the kids wanted to do it.