Exploring the Bay of Islands

We have spent the last five days exploring the islands. What a fantastic area to cruise around. It is all very sheltered and there are lots of anchorages in different bays and so there is shelter from just about any wind direction.

We started off in Oke Bay, a beautiful little bay with a nice beach and lined with trees. We then did a fairly big walk to Cape Brett which is at the southern end of the Bay of Islands. The walk was only 5km each way from Deep Water Bay, but there was a lot of up and down! There were great views from the Cape and it gave us an idea of what is to come as we head south.

Deep Water Bay

X-Pat at anchor in Oke Bay

The path to Cape Brett

Cape Brett

We visited Paradise Bay, which lived up to its name. Although we went ashore here we didn’t do any of the walks on the island and so may have to go back. We then did an overnight in Pi Pi Bay. Although the snorkelling here was quite poor I did see a ray, which seemed to be getting cleaned by little cleaner fish.

A ray getting cleaned

The food just keeps coming!

New Zealand Christmas Tree

Amazing root system on these Christmas Trees

We also visited Cook Bay on Motuarohia Island. The beach here turned out to be private, backed by some beautiful houses. So instead we took the dinghy around to the adjacent bay and a walk up the top of the hill, gave us some spectacular views of the islands.

Views of the Bay of Islands

We are back in the marina now at Opua and plan to get the boat tidied up over the next few days before we fly back to Sydney for Christmas.