Oh no, not another paradise!

Sunday 4th March 2007
Hello from North Island, New Zealand. Today we sleepily set off on the shuttle bus back to the airport terminal to pick up our hire car. And very nice it is too, no Beast, just a good automatic saloon car which will get us around for the two weeks touring we have planned.
We’ve set a pattern of one-hour-on, one-hour-off, for each of us driving as we expect to cover many hundreds of miles in the next fortnight. So, first stop was for a late breakfast at Puhoi,a lovely little village, which calls itself historic because all the buildings are more than 100 years old. The weather was fine and sunny, with some cloud but much hotter than we expected.

Our destination was Paihia in the Bay of Islands, right in the north-east of the North Island. It was a ‘luxury b & b’ that I’d booked on the internet, again recommended by people on Tripadvisor. The drive up was wonderful – like the most beautiful bits of England – rolling green countryside, totally unspoilt. And we were absolutely delighted when we drove into Paihia – a beautiful little place overlooking, as you might expect, the Bay of Islands. Gorgeous. And our room and the b & b have the best views of all because it’s situated just outside Pahia in Hulara Falls, on a hill overlooking the bay. We just flopped in the lovely sunshine (about the temperature of the very best English summer’s day but without the mugginess) in the gardens.

At about 5pm we decided to go on the ferry across the bay to Russell, which is ‘New Zealand’s most historic town’ (Ref. Rough Guide to New Zealand). Wow, even more stunning than Paihia – old colonial clapboard houses, with balconies, fronting the water. We had dinner on the waterfront, the most idyllic setting with a brilliant sunset.
Good wine, great food, and amongst the best views we’ve seen anywhere in the world

When Ben was about eight, one holiday he said to me ‘how do you always know the best places to come for holidays’. I think it was in Cyprus. Kids always think their parents have some magic power to choose wonderful places, because for them, holidays are wonderful. Well, all those of you who laughed at my research and called me obsessive, eat your hearts out. Yes, I was (am!)obsessive, hours and hours on the internet,but this place alone makes it all worth it.