After breakfast, and me learning that yes, we will be getting up at 6am every morning, and no, no one cares if that makes me grouchy, we headed down another scenic highway this time traveling from the west side of the island to the east. In two hours we were in Pahia, a busy little beach town. We noticed that we had lucked out in a way, every one else seemed to be traveling in the other direction for their holiday weekend, and we missed all the traffic.

We took a ferry to a town across the harbor called Russell that is attributed as the first settlement or something that gives it an excuse to be a tourist attraction but wasn’t worth it, other than seeing the oldest pub in NZ. We wandered around and ate lunch. A catamaran picked us up there and we took the 4 hour Bay of Islands tour. It was beautiful. We went to the hole in the rock, and actual feature that the boat could pass through. They brought us to a private island and gave us time to view all the islands, climb around and play with sheep. After the boat dropped us off back at Pahia, we realized that despite it being a little overcast, we had third degree burns on our faces. Lovely.

We went to a local bar and had some fish and chips. In NZ, there is no such thing as ketchup. It’s tomato sauce. And you pay for it. By the package. Boo. I beat MK at darts and we stared at a TV playing cricket and pretended we had any clue why anyone watches that silly sport, then went home and passed out.