We left for the Million Dollar Road and the plan was to go on to Pahia.
It started getting cloudy again and so photos were limited and we will have to go back again to get some photos overlooking the islands, it must be great in the sun.
Pahia is the so called centre of the Bay of Islands and last time we visited here it was on our way up to see Brian and Shelia in the house in which we are currently staying. At that time Pahia was buzzing with people however then it was early March. Now in November it’s quite deserted apart from about three bus loads of tourists that turned up. It’s quite a small place and survives off the ferry services to the islands and other water driven tourism.
They have a fast 1600 bhp speed boat that can travel around the islands at breakneck speed down to the more relaxing type of boat rides.Most of the shops sell food or tourist type products and the only thing missing was the ‘Pahia Rock’
We left Pahia and headed back to Kerikeri for some food shopping and stopped off to get petrol for the car and give it a wash. Kerikeri is a real small town with a good variety of nice shops and even one selling what they term as UK products with large jars of Marmite and packs of Jammy Dodgers etc, not quite our style. The last time we visited Kerikeri was on market Sunday when all the shops are closed but this time they were all open and there are some nice clothes shops and several restaurants which we may try given the time. This town seemed quite busy and even the McDonalds was being renovated. New World Supermarkets run special offers of wine from time to time and this time they had bottles of Oxford Landing Sauvingnon Blanc for NZ 6.95 which is about £ 2.60 per bottle and so not a bad price. In fact we notice that our shopping costs are much lower here than the UK with prices we guess around 20 to 25% cheaper than the UK although perhaps you don’t have quite as much choice.
It took us about 50 minutes to get back home, it could have been faster , but there was a police car following an old car at well below the speed limit and of course nobody would overtake. The speed limit here is variable but on the main roads its 100 kph or about 62 mph. It’s strange but in road works they never seem to use self controlling light system but two or three people using walkie talkies and a STOP and GO boards. Here, just like UK, there is perhaps only 20 percent of the workers doing something whilst the rest look on.
By the time we got back at about 5pm the sun was out and it was quite warm.
We tested the Oxford Landing and it wash fine-hic.
