Cash's Visit- Bay of Islands

My friends from law school, Cash, has been visiting. Cash flew into Auckland after a week in Sydney and he and I have been enjoying some nice travel on the North Island. We went up to the Bay of Islands which is north of Auckland and the birthplace of New Zealand. In 1840, the colonists signed a treaty with the Maori that marks the beginning of New Zealand. We toured the treaty grounds and the house where the English governor-general lived. The Bay of Islands is a pretty popular tourist spot in the summer with many Aucklanders owning homes there as it is 2-3 hours from Auckland. One day we took a boat tour to see dolphins and tour through the Bay of Islands. It turned out to be a sunny day which was wonderful after several rainy days in a row. The boat was multi-leveled and had quite a few tourists on board. It was about a 4 hour ride and they took us past many of the islands in the bay and out to Cape Brett which is where the Pacific Ocean meets the end of the bay. We went through "Hole in the Rock" which you can see in the picture was just what it sounds like. There was some tension because the Pacific swells seemed quite large, at least for us guys from Kansas and Colorado. We did make it through without incident but I couldn't help but think of Deadliest Catch and how those guys work in freezing weather with swells 5 times what we experienced. The last picture is from an island stopover we made where we hike to the top of this rise where the views were spectacular.

We ended up not seeing dolphins so we got a voucher for a return free visit that most tourists never use. However, Molly and I will be headed back up there so she can see it so free boat tour here we come!