Whangarei Day 183 20/03/2015

We're both keen to visit the Bay of Islands before we leave New Zealand. It's in Northland, north east of Auckland and a long drive from Hawke's Bay, but we were up for journey and set off just after 8am. It had been cold overnight due to the tail end of Cyclone Pam, and was still chilly with clear skies as we packed up. We headed north to Hastings and on to Napier before turning north west towards Taupo, where we'd stayed on our journey south. As we got closer to Taupo we could see the huge snow capped mass of Mount Ruapehu and the conical dome of Ngauruhoe in the distance. We discussed, very briefly, heading back there to do some more walking but decided to continue as planned. From Taupo we continued north west, stopping for lunch by a lake, to Hamilton to join the highway to Auckland, only to find it was closed and we had to follow the division for a short while. As we approached Auckland we slowed to a near stop as we had joined the rush hour traffic. The weather on route had been glorious sunshine but the skies were now black and it wasn't long before the rain started. Once eventually through Auckland we headed north along the east coast. As it was nearly 7pm we decided to stay at Whangarei for the night. We'd driven nearly 600km in the day and we were both ready to stop (plus our bums were very numb!). Whangarei is the Northland's only city and is surrounded by rolling hillside and forests, just south of the Bay of Islands. We just managed to park up and have a beer before the sun went down.