We departed the Coromandel via ferry, spent the night in Auckland and then hopped on a bus for a 7 hour ride to the top of the North Island. Two buses later and I with a broken front rack we found our selves in Kaitaia. Brian was quickly off to a hardware store to find something that might work. I was going nowhere and took this beautiful picture of a giant lawn bowler or maybe it's depicting the story of the thief and a his enormous pearl (story yet to be made up and written by me). Either way it wasn't too long before Brian was back and the problem fixed. Later that day we rode up towards Cape Karikari and camped at Maitai Bay, a gorgeous area which most the pictures above are from. We set out the following day for Russell, a quiet and romantic town, according to the I-center lady who thought we were "together". It was a beautiful 75 miles and another small ferry ride into the Bay of Islands. From Russell we took the back roads around the northwestern part of the island sticking to the coast. Instead of the short day of riding that we had anticipated, our route took us up and down and in and out and up and down again about a thousand times, and that might be a generous estimate. It was exhaustive work and a leg destroyer to say the least. 62 miles later we wound up in the town of Whangarei and only 60 miles north of Auckland. With only 3 days until our flight, we opted for a more enjoyable end to our trip, rather than a stressful day or two of cycling with half the motorists of New Zealand on the busiest part of the freeway. And so in deconstructing our bikes and giving our butts some much needed rest, we set out to rent a car for the last couple of days.
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