We drove (yet another) picturesque route north from Mangawhai to Russell, which is the old capital of New Zealand. It's just over the water from Waitangi where the original treaty between the representatives of Queen Victoria and the Maori was signed.

Russell is quaint and full of old wooden buildings. We stayed in a very deluxe complex of holiday homes where we had our own 4 bedroom house (they lock the bedrooms you are not using) and not only did we have a proper huge downstairs living area with sofas, large dining table and spacious kitchen but we also had a proper utility room. Brian was rather disappointed that we had no clothes yet to wash so made a special effort to find some with a speck of two of sea spray or some other nonsense on them and made sure they got thoroughly cleaned. I am starting to worry about him.

We went across to Paihia on a small ferry boat and walked a mile or so from there to Waitangi to see where the treaty had been actually signed. It was the day before Waitangi Day, a national holiday to celebrate the signing of the Treaty so there were already a lot of Maori gathered for the festival. A Marae (Maori meeting place) had been erected, with a very colourful carved entrance, to which many of the New Zealand politicians were expected to attend the next day. Traditionally there has been quite a bit of trouble with protestors hectoring and barracking the politicians at the Waitangi Marae, but this year was one of the most peaceful to date, although Helen Clark did not attend this year, having had suspicious liquids thrown at her at a previous occasion.

On the way back to Auckland we stopped off at some public toilets designed by Frederick Hundertwasser in a town called KawaKawa. The toilets are fantastic, as you can see from our photos. Lots of mosaic, curves and wavey lines. He was an austrian architect who has designed a lot of unusual and interesting buildings around the world, some of which we saw when we were in Vienna. He ended up spending a lot of time in New Zealand because he loved the country so much and enjoyed a greater degree of anonymity there. He particularly enjoyed designing buildings for public use and championed the curve of organic nature against the straight line. He died on the QE2 while sailing to Europe and is buried in New Zealand.

We then went to a small place called Rawene to do a walk through the mangroves and look at an old colonial house. Bri was quite relieved to find it was closed so he didn't have to traipse through lots of rooms admiring their Victorian kitchen implements and bedpans, but I was quite disappointed. We also stopped off at some sand-dunes at Omapere with an amazing view of a distant sandspit we could have reached by ferry if we had more time. Sadly we didn't.

Finally we visited a humongous tree called Tane Mahuta (I think it means 'really old tree) - that is estimated to be about 2,000 years old; it was AWESOME.

After a few days in the Bay of Islands it was time to head back to Auckland, our final destination in New Zealand before going to Argentina. Our cases are groaning and in danger of being well over the luggage limit and it's time to head off back to the Post Office to squeeze more souvenirs into a large box and send them home so we've got something to look forward to when we get there. Other than an endless round of Welcome Home parties, 50th birthday parties and curry nights of course.

Hint hint.