Roadtrip to the Far North
This past weekend was a long weekend here (holidays for both Good Friday and Easter on Monday), so Cindy and I decided to do a road trip and explore Northland. (Max is off to Japan on a two-week school exchange trip.) Photos from the trip are here.
We left Friday morning heading North. We decided to do the loop clockwise, ending up in the most popular spot, the Bay of Islands, at the end of the holiday weekend when the crowds would be heading back to Auckland.
First stop was the wonderful Kauri Museum in Matakohe - rather than a short stop, we ended up spending several hours wandering through all the rooms, and the magnificent displays about the kauri, the logging history, the kauri gum industry, logging tools and machinery, many beautiful items made from kauri, and a full-size slice of a kauri tree dominating the main hall.
After the museum, we headed on to Dargaville, and out to Baylys Beach for a late afternoon walk (dodging the cars and dirt bikes allowed on the beach there), then back to Dargaville to spend the night.
Saturday we went up and had our breakfast on the lawn of the Dargaville Museum, with a beautiful view overlooking the town and Wairoa river valley. The masts of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior are also here as a memorial. (The French blew it up in Auckland Harbor in 1985, to prevent it from protesting French nuclear testing in the Pacific, killing one crewmember in the process.)
Then we drove up what is known as The Kauri Coast, driving through the Waipoua Forest, stopping to see the two largest living kauri trees, “Father of the Forest” Te Matua Ngahere and “Lord of the Forest” Tane Mahuta. Truly magnificent trees - they remind me of the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse tree, which was big enough to have a spiral stair up inside the trunk! It was great to walk through some remaining kauri forest, to see these trees “in the wild”.
Lunch was overlooking Hokianga Harbour, with giant sand dunes at the harbour entrance. Then a ferry from Rawene, and on to Ahipara. We stayed right on the water, and had a wonderful sunset walk on the beach.
Sunday we did a bus tour of the Aupouri Peninsula to Cape Reinga as a way to travel along the Ninety Mile Beach highway (not recommended for personal autos, or covered by insurance). It turned out to be a fantastic choice, as we had a wonderful driver, went to some places we otherwise wouldn’t have, and I got to relax and enjoy the ride rather than driving. We went with Sand Safaris out of Kaitaia. Our driver Senny was great, saying he’d been out of work and at the pub all night, and this was his first day driving the bus (15 years actually), and that the roadkill along the way would be good for lunch! Being local Maori, he was able to give us lots of interesting information about the area, about Maori legends, and also sang Maori songs for us along the way.
We stopped by Ancient Kauri Kingdom, which carried lots of kauri products, and actually did have a spiral staircase inside a kauri log to their upstairs! (Kauri products are all made from swamp kauri - downed trees from ancient forests recovered from bogs and farmland - or from trees that have succumbed to lightning or disease.) Next was Gumdiggers Park - kauri gum had various uses, and was dug out from the same buried ancient forests. The park is an old gum field, that is riddled with the pits dug long ago, and re-created digger’s huts. Many of the diggers were immigrants from Dalmatia (part of modern-day Croatia), and to this day Dalmation is spoken in Northland along with Maori and English.
Then a brief stop at Rarawa Beach to see the incredibly pure white silica sand, which had been harvested to make glass until it was feared it would all disappear!
Then on to Cape Reinga (Te Rerenga Wairua) and its lighthouse, (almost) the furthest northern point of New Zealand, where the Tasman and Pacific come together. It was a beautiful day, and the meeting of the seas was fairly calm, but can crash together with large waves. Next was a nice lunch stop at nearby Tapotupotu Bay, then out to the giant sand dunes and the beach. We stopped for a chance to toboggan down the giant dunes, then out to the top end of Ninety Mile Beach (Te Oneroa A Tohe) - actually more like 90-kilometre beach. We blasted down the beach, all the way back, with just a photo stop along the way!
As it was fairly late afternoon, we just stayed in Kaitaia that evening. Monday morning we went out to the Karikari Peninsula to check out the beautiful double-bay beach at Matai Bay. We had a nice walk along the beach, getting caught in a rain shower just before returning to the car. Then through the little town of Whatuwhiwhi (that’s pronounced “fah-too-fee-fee”, by the way), and on to Mangonui, where we had lunch at the “World Famous” fish-n-chips shop there - and yes, it was very good!
We arrived in the Bay of Islands area, driving through Kerikeri on our way to Paihia, thinking we would go back there to find a place for the night. We toured the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the Maori chiefs and the Crown in 1840, which is New Zealand’s founding government document.
After the Treaty Grounds, we did a woods walk in the late afternoon, enjoying the varied calls of the tuis. By the time we got back, it was late enough so that we just found a place in Paihia, and enjoyed walking around the town that evening.
Paihia is a tourist town right on the water, with lots of motels, resturaunts, and shops, and is the hub of Bay of Island activities, including all kinds of water activities, tours of the islands in the bay, and ferries to the historic town of Russell. Luckily we came at the end of the holiday weekend, so the population had probably dropped by a factor of ten, but still plenty of people around. Unfortunately, it was absolutely pouring down rain, so our interest in doing any of these activities was, shall we say, dampened! Instead, we enjoyed lingering in a cafe, then going ahead and heading out of town, south back towards Auckland.
Along the way we stopped to see “Hundertwasser’s Loo” in Kawakawa, which are pretty cool public toilets in town designed by, you guessed it, Hundertwasser! Then on to Whangarei, where Cindy had a couple craft/hobby shops to check out. For some reason, the traffic in town here was terrible! I think with the school holiday, everyone in Northland had come to Whangarei to go shopping! We went out of town a little ways to check out Abbey Caves, but they were not walk-in caves - I’ll have to go back with a caving group sometime to check them out. Also in Whangarei was the Margie Maddren Fernery and Stanley John Snow Conservatory, which has a wonderful display of native ferns, along with a couple greenhouses, one with exotics and one with cacti.
Finally, a couple hours more, and we were back home! As always, nice to go, and nice to come home. This was like the “Europe in 2 weeks” type of trip, where now I know where I’d like to go back and spend more time.
Many thanks to Kim and Susan for the tips on places to go in Northland, and for the Northland map!