We left Auckland around 11:30 on Friday after a nice brunch with Charlie and Liz. They both seemed pretty psyched about the Samoa situation (that’s where they were headed for the week.)
The drive north was beautiful as expected. We headed towards the Kauri forests but ended up stopping along the way at the Kaori museum and the Kai Iwi Lakes along the way. The museum was amazing, lots of interesting information, a huge cross section of a kauri, and a kauri gum room that was sweet as. The gum looks like amber.
Some of the largest kauris that have ever existed. I'm pointing to the one we went to see later. Don't be fooled, just because it looks small compared to the other ones, it's really quite huge.
A cross-section of a kauri tree
A very holy looking bible carved from kauri gum
We stopped at one of the Kai Iwi lakes for a short lunch of peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwiches made handily by Sean. We were worried about the sun setting so we took off for the Kauri forest.
Sean at the Kai Iwi lakes
Doing our stupid antics
The road was winding crazily as per usual New Zealand style, but eventually we got to the base point of the trek. It was dusk by this point (5:15) so we ended up going for a bit of a jog to see the four sisters and Tane Mahuta (the father of the forest.) The father of the forest was huge, unreal, and startling. We ran around this bend on the board walk and then all of a sudden, this huge wall like tree appears in its own clearing so it was the only thing lit up. We stared in awe for awhile then ran all the way back….nearly running into a night time tour group that was on its way in. We ended up doing what was supposed to take an hour in 25 minutes. We cooked dinner and spent the night at this lovely hostel just overlooking the water.
Okay so that's the sort of visible outline of it. Click on the link (this text) and it should get bigger. Supposedly you could build at least 9 houses out of it if it were cut down.
We thought the tree was big, but it's kind of too dark to see it
Saturday we got up around 8:00 and took off up the hill to see the divide between the bay and the Tasman. It has a great view all the way down the bay, across to the sand dunes, into the mtns, and out to see. It was quite the point. We played in the forest and took some stupid pictures. The plan afterwards was to head to the sandboarding place (take a ferry out, sandboard, come back) but unfortunately there weren’t enough people so he wasn’t going to take a tour out (we never really heard back from him.)
Don't know what was happening here
Me in the forest
Sean looking cool
We headed out of Omaperhe and Opononi north towards Kataia. We booked a tour of 90 Mile Beach, Cape Reinga etc. for all day Sunday. We took a detour to a small town called Amaperhe and decided to go to spend the night there. We hired sand dune toboggans and were going to head over to the dunes when we found out our hostel rented surfboards and wetsuits for cheap. We spent a long while trying to surf at shipwreck bay (you can actually see some wrecks at times.) Sean got up once, and I managed to get on my knees in surf position but never mastered the feet thing. Sean’s been once before in Hawaii, and it was my first time. I imagine it was pretty amusing for all the people on the beach watching us. We were going to go tobogganing afterwards when we ran into this adorable puppy on the road. We tried to find its home by going to houses in the area but ended up bringing him back to the hostel because the owner is an SPCA foster home. A guy came at night looking for him, so Tama (son in Maori) as he is supposedly called, was claimed. We ended up missing out on Tobogganing in the search for his owner, but weren’t too upset as we were to go on our tour the next day. We made a nice pasta dinner in the hostel and ate chocolate chip cookies before bed.
Our hostel in Ahipara. You could see the ocean from our room. It's probably less than 100m behind me to the beach. This is one of the most beautiful hostels I've ever stayed in.
Shipwreck Bay
The car is little, surfboards are not
I won't tell you what happened next
Come on you would have picked it up too. He loved to sit still and be held
The tour on Sunday lasted from 9am till about 5pm, and was well worth the time I thought. We went all over the cape to several beaches, all the way up to Cape Reinga (basically the northern most point easily accessible by people), and then drove all the way along 90 Mile Beach back to Kaitaia. 90 mile beach is actually 64 miles long, but it was a beautiful drive along the ocean, and we saw this huge full arch rainbow along the way.
A spiral staircase cut into a 40,000 year old Kauri log (well part of it.)
Such a fun tree
Cape Reinga
Top of a hill overlooking the cape
We did go sand tobogganing down the dunes (some are 300 ft + tall.) Steering was a bit tough at times and admittedly I took an awesome rolling fall on my last run. The only drawback was the walking up the giant dunes.
Sand tobogganing
Drive along 90 Mile Beach
We drove down to Paihia in the Bay of Islands on the east coast that night. Got on a dolphin cruise of the Islands for the morning. We didn’t end up seeing any dolphins (and obviously didn’t get to swim with any accordingly,) but we did get to see some fur seals, and had a nice tour and history lesson of the islands.
Dolphin cruising
The hole in the rock
Going through the famous 'hole in the rock' in the Bay of Islands
On our way to Whangarei we stopped to see the Hundertwasser toilets (he’s a famous architect who was only allowed to design these ridiculous toilets in NZ.) I’ve mentioned them once before in the blog when I first saw them. Then we went for a tour through these glow worms caves…they’re still really awesome the third time seeing them. Sean really liked it too, mostly because caves are awesome. I wish I could have taken him to do the full day of caving down in Waitomo because that’s an unbelievable adventure (as I described long ago.) We actually didn’t have enough cash on us to pay the guy in full, so he just told us to post the last $5 to him….really cool of him we thought.
Climbing back over the hill after our glow worm cave tour
We stopped at Whangarei falls because it was supposed to be pretty. Turns out it was.
Whangarei falls. Sean's demonstrating what happens when water goes over the edge.
Sean looks so bitty
We had a lot of trouble taking this because our cameras were out of battery
Anyways, we spent the night at the Bunkdown Backpackers in Whangarei. Spent the night doing another night trek through a Kauri forest (this one had a boardwalk suspended up in the trees) followed by cooking a nice dinner in the hostel. The guy who ran the hostel was really nice and helped us book a Scuba diving trip for the whole next day. They came and picked us up nice just afer 7 and drove us out to Tutukaka on the coast. The whole day was really beautiful. We dove at Poor Knights Islands (supposedly one of the top 10 places in the world!), went in the largest known sea cave in the world, through a giant rock archway, and Sean got to go snorkeling with some fur seals while I was out on my second dive. He did the discover scuba! adventure and got a certificate and everything. Basically he went on two dives alone with a dive master (since he’s not certified they had to keep him close.) Lots of fish and eels, and we even found this small airpocket in a cave on one of my dives. Could stick your head up into it and take out the regulator (that’s the breathing tube.)
totally dashing I think
I've decided I want to be a navy seal because they get to run in flippers and all this gear...which would make me ripped.
That archway behind us is evidently the 7th most awesome place to scuba in the world. I'm not quite sure why my mouth is open, kind of looks like the way eels keep their mouths open all the time.
The water looks a bit like pool water in places because it's so clear
We drove back to Auckland that night and I dropped Sean off at the aiport the next day (yesterday.) It was very sad to see him go, but so worth having him around for these past two weeks.
There is of course lots more to say about all these adventures, but too much for the blog that’s already gotten too long.
Hope everyone is well and enjoying their summers whilst I’m over here in winter.
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