So lots to catch up on… it's been a busy 3 days here in NZ.On Thursday we decided to stay an extra day in the Bay of Islands and do a sailboat trip out to one of the outer islands. It is definitely the highlight of the trip so far. We left Russell dock at 10:00am and headed for the open ocean.. ok so maybe it wasn't the open ocean.. but if you headed straight out thru all the islands and over the horizon… in 8 days you would hit Fiji. He he The wind picked up about 11:00 and we sailed for about an hour before we made anchor just off one of the uninhabited islands.We then took the kayaks out and explored the coastline for a while. The water is so crystal clear blue and the islands so green and full of foliage. It's very pretty.Once we were done Kayaking we headed for sure where we hiked up this trail to the top of the island. Brandon it was mildly reminiscent of the ridgeline hike in Maui… though not nearly half has intense.. but the view from the top was spectacular. A 360 degree panoramic of all the islands and mainland as far as you could see with the white sandy shores or jagged cliff edges giving way to the turquoise green/blue water withgreen capped foliage tops.Sigh… it was spectacular. We then headed back to the boat for lunch and then pulled anchor and headed for another 3 hour sail. We had a perfect 12 knot breeze and our 42 foot boat handled it perfectly. J Both Nick and I had a blast. Nick in particular had a great time as this was his first time out sailing on a large boat. We both agreed there would be more sailing in our future. That night we had a bowl of seafood chowder.. Probably the best I have ever had and sat by the fire recapping the days adventure. It really was a perfect day.

Friday morning we left Russell and headed down the coastline to The Farm. However, as we came up on the sign to the Farm I looked at Nick and then back at the farm with this gaze of… you have got to be kidding me… that's the farm.It was this tiny, run down looking place that didn't seem to have many amenities.. not to mention it was full of primary school aged kids. We decided to continue on. We ended our day back in Ruakaka hoping for some wind to kite. The wind never did fill in.. but it was great to catch up with Dave and Sue.

Saturday we went for a hike to the Whangerie Falls just 30 min north of Ruakaka. That was a lot of fun.The waterfall was huge at least 80 feet high and lots of water crashing down. The water fall then turned into a stream/creak that wound around for quite a while. We did the river hike which basically followed the river for 1/5 hours. It was lovely. We saw lots of huge and small Kauri trees, this gigantic 20 foot tall ferns and all sorts of other foliage. When we returned to Dave and Sue's everyone was at the cable park so we went down to the lake/pond and got a wakeboard session on the new Cable park that Dave and Sue built. It's really slick.. the cable pulls you down the lake just like you were behind a boat. You can do jumps and flips and spins just like you would wakeboarding or Kiteboarding. It's a perfect no wind activity. We all had a blast and fell into bed last night completely exhausted.

Today, being Sunday we are just regrouping. We had a session at the cable park this morning early and will also be heading down there this afternoon. In the meantime we are planning out our next destination… we are headed to the Coromandal Peninsula. Not sure if we will leave tomorrow or Tuesday… it depends on the wind.Well until next time.

Cheers!