After landing early into Auckland to wind and rain, and after picking up our campervan home for the next two weeks, we provisioned ourselves and set off for the Northland.
The good thing about rain is that it leads to rainbows.
The Northland is lots of rolling hills with sheep and cows.
As we drove closer and closer to Bay of Islands and caught glimpses of this scenic “God’s Country” spot, I kept exclaiming about each beautiful vista. I’m not sure if I’d ever tire of the views there, even if I lived there.
The coastline was unique, but in some ways had the quaint, charming small town feel of Maine, the plants that I recognize from Southern California, the blue water of the Caribbean, and the dramatic, jagged mountains plunging into the sea of the South Pacific.
There’s something about looking out into the ocean with many beautiful islands in the distance that is more beautiful than looking at an endless stretch of open ocean. However, Russell has no whitewater, and no surf, so there’s no sound of crashing waves, which I love too, nor waves to play in.
Russell is also quite remote and hard to get to. We actually missed the last turnoff because we couldn’t believe the dirt road was the way we were supposed to go. But sure enough, if you’re getting to Russell by land, this was the road. (it turned out a car ferry was the better approach). We drove the last 10 miles or so through a forest on a dirt road and I felt as if I was in Sherwood Forest in Nottingham, England.
Russell, after all, was one of the first British settlements on New Zealand, and still has a British feel to the architecture and community.
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