New Zealand’s Bay Of Islands Are ‘Boring’

PAHIA, New Zealand- The scene before us was something out of someone’s imagination: green islands and jagged coves and glistening blue ocean. But before I could do an uhhh or an ahh my eight-year-old daughter summed up the scene.

“This is just New Zealand’s boooorrrrrring Bay of Islands,” she said before declaring what we were looking at the boring-est beach in the history if the world.

She wasn’t right, but she also wasn’t that far off.

We drove up to Pahia from Whangarei because the name “Bay of Islands” sounded cool to us. What we found was a tier-3 tourist trap — a roadside town custom built for tourists with helicopter rides, dolphin tours, expensive restaurants, nice guesthouses, and all that.

Fair enough.

Not impressed.

But there really wasn’t much for us here. We walked up and down the coast, got rained on, bought a meat pie, and scrammed.

So much for Pahia and the Bay of Islands.

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