Visiting Whangaroa Harbour

New Zealand is full of beautiful and quaint little settlements and villages.  On our travels, we are hoping to explore as many of these small towns as we can.

One such little village is Whangaroa Harbour.  For our many overseas friends and family, Whangaroa is pronounced "Fun-ga-row-ha).

The name comes from a lament Whaingaroa or "what a long wait" of a woman whose warrior husband had left for a foray to the south.

Whangaroa Harbour is a surprisingly small but beautiful harbour settlement, popular as a deep-sea fishing spot with a beautiful small harbour on one side of the road that leads into the town and rocky cliffs and land on the other side.

The charm of this really small town is it's remoteness as you have to take a scenic detour to get there and there is only one road into and out of the village.
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As we entered the town the beautiful bay and harbour grabs your attention immediately.

At the entrance to this small town is this welcoming sign with the following words "Te Wahapu O Whangaroa" which translated means the door to Whangaro and with that simple yet effective entrance sign is a lovely sneak peak of the beautiful harbour.

 Then a little further on, we saw the lovely harbour views:

Now from Tauranga Bay we can only see the entrance to the bay of Whangaroa Harbour in the distance, but we were treated to the most beautiful morning rolling mists flowing out of the bay and over hills .

Almost like a visual of the lament of the woman of Whangaroa waiting for her warrior to return ..... she waits in the shrouded dawn of the day ..... waiting ..... but when the mist clears there is only sea and hills .....