Whangaroa

Whangaroa is one of those “must go” places on the North Island and is also a convenient place to wait for a weather window for the leap around North Cape, Cape Reinga and down the Tasman to the Marlborough Sounds. It is roughly 35 miles from the Bay of Islands up the coast to Whangaroa. Unfortunately, our weather window for the trip down the Tasman opened the morning after we arrived in Whangaroa so we packed as much as we could in to about a half a day after our arrival. It is easily worth 3 or 4 days here. Since there is so much to it, I am going to break this post in to several parts beginning with our trip up and arrival.

First, a few random pictures as we travelled up the coast.

An interesting shot of the moon and high clouds.

This is a shot of the monument to the Rainbow Warrior which was sunk by the French in an act of terrorism in Auckland Harbor. You may recall that the Rainbow Warrior was a Greenpeace ship and was protesting the French nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific. She was brought up here and turned in to an artificial reef.

The entrance to Whangaroa Harbor is extremel narrow and barely visible until you are on top of it.

There are also numerous caves – some big enough to run the dink thru.

This is an old concrete gun emplacement from World War 2 at the entrance to the harbor.

Once in the entrance, there are two arms – one leading to a sport fishing marina (too small for us) and the right arm which leads back to a beautiful little cove.

The scenery on the way down is breathtaking.

The odd looking formation that looks like a head with a big nose is called the Jig’s Nose. There were a few people on top that appeared to be yelling and waving as we pulled in to the harbor, but more about that next time.

Finally, Iron Lady sitting quietly in the bay and we were the only ones there – or so we thought.