We woke up in our backpackers in Paihia in the Bay of Islands to a bright sunny day. The guy who runs the backpackers said they offer a 'backpackers special' for a cruise of the Bay. There are 144 islands in the bay so it seemed like a cruise was great choice.
We hopped on a giant boat a 9am with 15-20 other people and took off to enjoy the views of all the islands.
Along with the views of the island this was also a dolphin sighting cruise. The cruise line we were on has a sister ship where you can swim with the dolphins. I have to say neither of us were really game to swim with the dolphins, but I was more than happy to take about 100 pictures of them! Swimming with dolphins has always seemed kind of strange and sketchy to me with the people running the cruise saying 'oh the dolphins love it'-Really? Did they tell you that? At least the people running things in New Zealand say that they have strict rules about not feeding the dolphins to lure them to the boat and not letting anyone touch the dolphins. There were 4 male dolphins that did seem like they were having a good time, I mean, they hung around the swimmers and boats for almost an hour.
We then cruised to the 'Hole in the Rock' at the end of the bay, which really is just a giant hole in a giant rock. It would have been cool to go through the giant hole, but the waves were too rough to take us tourists there.
I was very happy to get off the boat on
Urupukapuka Island to stretch our legs and hopefully warm up a little. We only had a short amount of time there so we quickly took off for a short walk up to a lookout of the Bay, it was a breathtaking view! It would have been great to have more time on the island. There are 66 Maori archaeological sites on the island and many of them can be seen on a archaeological walk...maybe next time!
There was one really interesting bit of history we learned once we got back on the boat. As we passed Motuarohia/Roberton Island we heard about its sad history. A former whaling ship Captain John Roberton purchased the island of Motuarohia from Ngapuhi chiefs Wareahi in 1839 and brought his wife and family from Scotland to live and farm on the island. Mr. Roberton drowned shortly after his family arrived, leaving his wife-who knew nothing about farming-alone on the island. She hired a few people to work the farm. One of the workers was
Maketu Wharetotara, the 17-year-old son of the Nga Puhi chief Ruhe of Waimate. Maketu worked with Thomas Bull on the farm. In March 1842 Maketu killed them because he believed they had offended his mana. Bull had been verbally and physically abusive towards him, and Mrs Roberton had sworn at him. He also killed Isabella, the young granddaughter of a Maori chief who had the unfortunate timing to be visiting. Maketu failed to explain why he felt it necessary to kill Mrs Roberton's two children or Isabella. In the end it was perhaps the killing of Isabella alone that sealed his fate. As a result of this, Maketu Wharetotara was found guilty and hung on March 7, 1842-the first execution in New Zealand. After that is was a divine dinner at Only Seafood where Keith had just about the freshest oysters yet-they had made the 15 ferry ride from Russell at 5pm-amazing!
The captain of the ferry had warned that the weather was going to turn and get rainy and unfortunately he was right. Saturday was a gray day where we faced with the deiscion-do we stay in the Bay of Islands and check out the Waitangi House where there
Treaty of Waitangi was signed (inside and out of the rain) or do we push on and drive all the way north to Cape Rengia? Of course we pushed on and I'm glad we did
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