The next morning the heavens opened and dispite my nerves having to drive a large hired car round the twistyest narrow roads i ever been on, much of which was almost vertical in places, we made it in one piece to The Bay of Islands. We stopped in Paihia for a couple of days and i feel bad for saying it, especially as i had been so looking forward to coming here, it wasn't as nice as i had hoped. By the end of the first day Kev had christened it the Bay of Dead Things. Between the dozens of jelly fish, possems, and sea creatures everywhere we looked something was dead. Any picture you google or buy on one of the million postcards for sale show crystal clear blue waters but there are so many cruise ships, private fishing charters, and boys toys that the water is more Cleethorpes than paradise. Paihia is the North New Zealands jewel, in the pictures and the many articals it is water sports and beach heaven, but as always it has been over used over hyped and is now full of backpackers. Still we stayed at quite a nice campsite for a couple of days partly because this was the first day we had been able to sunbathe and secondly kev had got food poisoning from some fish and chips so going to far wasn't really and option. And as all my entries seem to include yes it started raining, we had just reached a little town called keikeri. I've never seen rain like it, 30 seconds outside and you couldn't get any wetter. Today was also our wedding anniversary, so we bought some nice food and wine and checked into a lovely motel owned by the cutest english couple, he called her pudding.. ahhh. Our room even had a jaccuzzi bath! Turned out to be the nicest anniversary in years. Understandably we didn't want to leave but we had marked today to drive all the way up to Cape Reinga. This is the furthest most point of NZ. The downpour had let up a little so we thought it would be worth a try. As we ascended higher it was hard to shake off the eerie feeling, it seemed like for miles there was nobody around and due to the weather driving through the clouds made it look like thick fog swallowing the road ahead. Finally we made it to the carpark and started the walk to the lighthouse at the end of a paved trail. I would imagine if there was an edge to the world it would look like this. Rugged coastline fading into complete white. Amongst the other tourists we took our pics and headed back to the warmth of the car to find somewhere to stay the night.