Paihia

We really enjoyed Russell, but were underwhelmed by the camp, so the next day we headed off to Paihia.

T get there we had to head around the coast some more to take the ferry from Okiato to Opua. We had not done this before and had heard that when you had a motorhome, you could only cross at high tide, otherwise the angles involved would be too acute for the back end of the motorhome. We were glad we had Tina and John as guides – they had done it before.

Just as at Whitianga, the ferry crosses continually, but there are two of them. That meant we did not have long to wait.

As expected there was a bit of scraping heard from beneath the motorhome as we drove on to the ferry, but not too bad, and we were soon headed off to Opua. I spent some of the trip having cuddles with a miniature schnauzer passenger.

There wasn’t much on offer at Opua so we drove straight through and headed for a Park Over Property in the middle of Paihia, where we planned to spend two nights.

Paihia is a beautiful place, but unfortunately it is a stop over place for the cruise ships. Each day we were there, there was a new cruise ship in the harbour, each one with just over 3000 passengers. We had to plan our activities carefully so we would go to the more popular areas when the tourists had gone back to their boat! It was also notable that all the public toilets were a mess after they left. Apparently they don’t know how to press the flush button!

There was a beautiful gothic church down the road that we had a look around. It turns out that this is where Bruce was married the first time!

One of the must do’s, according to Bruce’s sister Kay, was to have dinner at the Thai restaurant, where you are served by a robot. We had a beautiful meal there, and Bella Bot was pretty cute.

We enjoyed the scenery around Paihia, and it was here that Tina and John’s friends from Whangamata finally caught up with us. Kevin and Marg made a nice addition to our team.

Our evening happy hours were joined by a couple also staying in the POP, called Greg and Marg. Greg entertained us with stories from his youth – he came from England, from a family that worked very hard with a green grocer shop. They expected Greg to work there as well, and when he declined, his father gave him a tanner and told him to “sod off”. He was 13, and thought that a tanner was a lot of money, so he took it, jumped on a bus, and came across a circus. They took him on and he became an animal trainer – elephants, tigers, lions etc., and travelled throughout Europe with the circus. The stories he told about the things that happened were amazing – such as lions escaping their cages and running around loose in a town; one lioness biting a drunk man who wasn’t even aware of it because he was so drunk, and because he was wearing a sheepskin coat that the lion’s teeth couldn’t penetrate!

Greg has built a miniature circus in his garage at home, with thousands of intricate figures and all the costumes pertaining to their roles; all the animals; and the tents etc. The photos he showed me were amazing!

We drove out to see a bit of the countryside around Paihia. On the way we passed the ship Tui, in a very sad state. She used to be a shipwreck Museum, set up by Kelly Tarlton, but apparently it was vandalised, and items stolen, so it is closed and left to decay. So sad. We would like to have gone to Waitangi, but they charge quite a bit now to even go on to the grounds, so we did not bother.

The views from the golf course were lovely though.

After doing the usual filling and emptying of tanks, and also filling the larder, we headed off again.