31.9 mi / 9.0 mph / 3087 ft. climbing
Home: Russell Top 10 Holiday Park

Early-morning rain pattered on our tent as predicted. Normally we keep our bikes standing right next to the tent, but last night thanks to the forecast, and the quiet holiday park, I had moved them under a large tent that covered the barbecue area. We have rain covers that keep our bags (and everything in them) dry in even fairly-heavy rain, but then our rain covers are wet, and all the surfaces on our bikes that we put stuff on are wet. So this time it definitely made it a lot easier to have a dry staging area with dry bikes to pack stuff up under. We escaped to that staging area and the kitchen once the rain had lightened to a mist, and a neighbor in an RV made a thoughtful offer to help carry our still-standing tent under the shelter as well (to allow it to be taken down in dryness), but it was easier to just look at the radar and wait for a dry-enough gap.

While the forecast was right about the rain’s arrival, it was wrong about its departure, and there was still a drizzle falling as we exited back over the 14% hill leaving the holiday park. We picked up a few things at the small grocery store on the way back through town, and then again in the mist on the 6% grade returning us to the main road, an RV was being annoyingly-cautious about not passing us. But as they finally made their move, they pulled up next to me and asked if we wanted a ride! I reflexively declined, but knowing how much Rett hates rain, and how exhausted she was from yesterday’s ride, I quickly retracted, and relayed the offer ahead to her. But no, she also declined (perhaps too-reflexively as well), so the RV carried on and we plugged away up the wet hill.

I had been watching the radar ever since our alarm went off, and we just had the unluck of being right in the narrow path that the rain was training through, and if we’d been five miles north or south, we wouldn’t have seen any rain. But at least that positional stability meant that once we got five miles up the road, it didn’t follow us, and stayed (mostly) dry the rest of the day.

We really didn’t need the rain, because the terrain would again be providing enough of a challenge. Unlike yesterday where the sequence of hills eventually took us 900 feet up from the sea, we would never get even 250 feet above sea-level on today’s somewhat more coast-hugging route. But, we would depart a bay, grind 200 feet up a 10% hill (or sometimes reaching 13%), descend to the next bay, and repeat that sequence 15 times! We finished the day having climbed 97 feet-per-mile (our fourth-highest average in NZ), totaling to our second 3000+ foot day in a row. That’s the first time we’ve ever done that, and thus the 6309 feet over two days is also our new highest two-day total. It’s a unique trick to do that on a day when we never exceeded 250 ft., but that’s New Zealand!

At least the road was nearly devoid of traffic, so we didn’t need to worry about passing cars stealing our focus from our 3.5mph climbs. And while a clear day would have made the vantage points down to the water pop a lot more, it was still a very scenic ride even under the clouds. At the bottom of one of the “V”s about halfway through we turned down to the boat launch/park at Te Uenga Bay to eat our lunch. It hadn’t felt too cold up until that point, but with the damp and sweat and breeze and no-sun, Rett definitely needed to bundle up in her down jacket to keep from getting too chilled. Despite all the boats anchored in the bay, perhaps only one or two cars went by on the road behind us, and we didn’t see any other humans, so it almost felt like we had discovered our own secret beach.

The pattern continued for the afternoon, though as we more-properly entered the “Bay of Islands”, we got some lengthier reprieves from the up-and-downs along mangrove-filled Waikare Inlet. Once we passed the road where the vehicle ferry brings cars to the town of Russell from the “mainland”, traffic increased exponentially, but we only had to deal with that for a couple miles and one more hill (Russell isn’t actually on an island, but driving around all the water to get to it is apparently more of a pain than floating across it; by virtue of our multi-day route, we had essentially “driven around” already and were approaching from the back door).

At the holiday park, Rett put up essentially no resistance to my idea to get a cabin rather than tenting, and since it was only US$61 and came with a fridge/kettle/bedding, it seemed like the obvious choice. We walked down to the waterfront for a mini-tour of the cute historic town, got a nice sit-down restaurant dinner, and strolled home in the dark to a well-deserved rest.

Day 2

The plan was to spend much of today exploring more of Russell, then take the ferry across to Paihia on the “mainland”, and set up in the holiday park on that side. But we woke again to more scattered showers in the area (these hadn’t been in the forecast at all), and that made me realize that doing a short hop today didn’t really buy us anything. We could just stay here, working around the rain from under our roof to double our familiarity with this cute town, and would still have no problem tomorrow of catching a morning ferry and riding directly on to Kaikohe, our next destination. It made so much sense that now I wondered why I’d even planned to stop in Paihia in the first place. I guess just to spend time in another town?

Yesterday there was a couple in the adjoining “cabin”, and I’d seen one other couple, but today it seemed like we were literally the only guests in the entire holiday park until a couple of backpackers showed up in the late afternoon. Since we had enough equipment to make breakfast in our cabin, and otherwise were eating out, I literally felt bad for the “lonely” (and very nice) kitchen. These days, we’re about the only people using holiday park kitchens, so if we’re not giving them any attention, who will?!

When the rain cleared out we returned to town to complete our walking tour, finding more cute shops for Rett to browse than our initial survey last night had indicated. Russell was the first permanent European settlement in New Zealand, though it was known as “The Hellhole of the Pacific” for a time due to its high levels of lawless debauchery. These days its a place where a man can buy a $2000 model boat in the same shop where his wife buys a $1000 glamorous coat.

After the lunchtime rainstorm the satellite view showed a hole in the clouds approaching us, so we took off for a hike to Tapeka Point, north of town. I cobbled together a loop of part-roads, part-trails, and it turned into a really nice tour of town, country and sea. The actual hike to the Point was surprisingly treacherous but awesome, though it was rather rude of the Bay of Islands to not present any marine mammals to us over the last couple days. Similarly rude near the end of our loop was the drizzle that returned, so we speed-walked the final bit home, now even more glad that we had decided to stay in place and had a dry roof to return to.