Monday 16th June
We woke up to a miserable, rainy day in Auckland. The docklands were covered in a thick blanket of rain and the skies were a dark grey. The cooler and wetter weather that met us on our arrival into New Zealand the day before had been something of a novelty, but this looked like it might be a sterner test of morale- wemight as well have been back in Derry! After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and started off on our drive northwards, to the Bay of Islands area in the Northland region.
The drive was a long and dull journey and the rain barely let up for the entire trip. We left Auckland at 10.30 and arrived into the small seaside town of Russell at about 17.00. We had stopped a couple of times on the way up, including lunch in Whangerei, and the entire drive time took about four and a half hours. The fact that we chose to take the longer, windy coastal road round to Russell added more time on to that, plus the rain was so heavy that we didn't see much of the coast anyway.
However, once we got to Russell, things started to brighten up a little. The house that we had rented for two nights was very comfortable, and had everything you might need (including cable TV, so I could watch some of Euro 2008, which I was pleased to discover). It was good to relax for a while and get a break from the car. We went out for dinner to a place called 'Sally's Restaurant' and I had one of the best steaks I have had in a long time.
Russell is just a small town with the primary industry being tourism, and there were few people about due to the fact that it was off-peak, but it seems like a lovely place to stay (especially when the weather is a bit better). We were all tired after a reasonably long trip, made all the more difficult by the miserable conditions. It felt good not to have to face another long journey the next day, and we hoped that it would clear up for us at least a bit.
