Paihia, Dolphins & Leon's birthday..

This is our accommodation for the four nights in Paihia (bay of Islands)..



So here we were then at The Pickled Parrot. An unassuming little backpackers (i.e. dump) in the back streets of Pahia. We've booked in here for four nights, as we were informed that accommodation in general would become harder to find as the Christmas Hols approached. We are in Tui (as picture). It's miles from the toilets, but very close to a busy road. It's also close to all the tropical undergrowth, which harbours biting things.

Pahia is the main resort town in the Bay of Islands. It looks like there will be lots to do. There also seems to be lots of vacant accommodation.
I did an excellent walk to the Harura Falls today - highlights included the walk through the Mangrove swamp (over a walkway) and the nesting Pied Shags.



MANGROVE SWAMPS



PIED SHAGS NESTING

Rita didn't do the walk as she had an attack of the vapours and retired to her room. I came back from the walk with my hip aching, boiling hot and gagging for a beer.
We went out and had a few beers. Rita showed me her 'cluster' of five insect bites on her arm. It reminded me of her phantom snake bite, experienced in Saltburn on the Cleveland Way (many years ago). She recovered well from that and the prognosis here is good.

13/12/2006



Next day was my birthday. 55 and still in short pants.
The intention was to swim with the dolphins today. The dolphins hadn't been told.
We went out on the trip out of the bay and after about 2 hours we encountered a pod of the said mammals. They were quite happy to be swimming alongside our boat, but we were not allowed to swim with them as, we were told,some had calves with them. God knows how the calves got so far out into the water - maybe the farmer left the gate open.
Anyway, the dolphin swim was off. But, hey, never mind. In compensation for this we were offered the experience of being dragged along in a big net by the boat. I declined. Rita double declined. On watching some of the people who took up this 'challenge', I didn't feel I'd missed too much. Maybe when I'm really old, I will think "I wish I'd gone in the net that day". It must have been great in the British Navy in the eighteenth century when Keel Hauling was the 'must do adventure activity'. Oh well. we did get some snorkelling in though.
On arriving back on dry land, we decided to celebrate my birthday.
I'll let Rita tell you about the celebrations....

Happy Birthday Leigh! Or is it Leon? The birthday celebrations were going so well that I was seeing double by this time anyway, and didn't really mind which one I was with! But I am skipping a bit (better than staggering eh?). We started off by having a drink or a 'handle' as the Kiwi's call it, in a Mauri bar. We then scoured the town's menus on restaurant doors for a 'little of what you fancy'. We chose a good one 'cos we ended up with quite a lot of what we fancied, but I guess any of the restaurants would have been happy to serve us with a bottle of Marlborough Savignon Blanc each. Yup! Apiece! Even the waitress looked a little surprised at that request! Leigh had to order a beer though whilst he waited for a whole minute for the wine to arrive. Thinking about it they all arrived together in the end and it was such a small table there was hardly room for the plates which actually were the very last items on the table to arrive. Why the detail? Well, because, that is where the devil is, and besides as you are reading this at work, then I am helping you to pleasantly pass the time, n'est-ce pas? Well then. And so...we had a delicious meal of 'Fish of the Day' from the fragments of the meal that I can recall and then weaved our way back to our local, a Mauri bar. Therein we spied a juke box, so in no time at all we were equipped with more beer and were singing along to Eddie Grant's 'I don't wanna dance, dance with you Baby no more. Oh, the feeling is bad, the feeling is bad. I don't wanna dance...' ad infinitum well almost as neither of us knew anymore of the words than that, so there was some intermittent humming. We soon found that we had an accomplice, a drunken Mauri bloke. He had a lovely voice. And so there are the three of us holding up the bar and engaging in our own singalong. This Mauri chappie is joined by Lorna, a stunning Mauri woman in long gushing but tightly fitting red dress, who, bleary eyed Leon proceeds to hang on her every word, seemingly. Suddenly there is no music on the juke box and the Mauri guy has stopped singing too, but an altercation is emerging between our attractive Lorna in our midst and a 'Stark-raving-no-chance-red-head Kiwi bloke'. Next thing much to our consternation he shifts his angry attention to us. To US! Long hard stares and on and on he stared and next thing, I blinked and 3 or 4 blokes are on him, arms around his shoulders, pointing him in the opposite direction and talking in firm reassuring terms. They calmed him down. And she's gone. Drunken Mauri bloke moves away too. Just Leigh and me then. Next thing, Betty and her daughter arrive and start chatting to us. Betty is a 55 year old toothless Mauri Grandma and her daughter, Catherine, tells us she has 7 children - and Leigh plants a kiss on her cheek and says 'Bless you!'. He is clearly impressed by her having 7 children despite not wanting one of these things for himself! Later, I see him pat Grandma Betty affectionately on the back, like a long lost pal. Then Leigh is shoving money in the juke box and the dancing recommences - only this time we are a happy foursome and some members of the group have something in common. Grandma Betty and Grandma Rita are both 55, only I still have teeth. We are jiving and diving and swinging and the room is going round and round. Suddenly the bar is deserted and someone is hoovering up around us. Leigh badly misses a step down as we take our leave and he nearly falls down. Phew! Are we desperate for our buddies or what! Should have been a memorable birthday, but apart from the few aforementioned hightlights most of it was already obliterated by the morning!









BIG WIDE KAURI TREE