In to the Northlands

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February 2nd 2007

Published: February 11th 2007

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ATTS

Treaty House

Getting friendly with the natives

We were picked up outside our hotel at 9am by the Ezy Car rentals people and taken out to their offices near the airport to pickup our Nissan Pulsar for our little touring holiday.

Auckland is a reasonably easy place to get around so by 10 we were outside the city heading North for Kumara's and Kauri's. It seems Kumara's are a sweet potato brought to the islands by the Maori sometime during the colonisation process, there is a big problem at the moment as the Maori like everything else here, are trying to legally claim "copyright" for this vegetable, however the government is arguing that they are not the same species that was brought here by waka, it also seems they originated in South America anyway.

The plan is to head for the Kauri Museum at Matakohe, New Zealand is a truely beautiful place, its extremely green with no obvious shortage of water, I keep telling the kiwi's I talk too that we are the first of a wave of Australian's planning to immigrate, its funny when their eyes bug out LOL.

It took about two hours to get there, the roads are not very wide and

Me in a tree

A kauri to be exact - Kauri Museum Matakohe

not real good by Oz standards so it took longer than expected. Not unexpectedly the museum was top rate and a good place to learn more about the Kauri tree before heading further north into the Waipoua Forests. There was some concern that we would not be able to see the forest giants as a major fire was burning in the region but we pushed on anyway arriving an hour or so later. We had to pay a man to watch the car as they are known to go missing if you dont, then wandered off into the forest, which was cool and moist with an abundance of ferns.

I was amazed when I saw my first big Kauri it sort of loomed out of the jungle and it was huge, this Kauri wasnt even the main attraction, 20 minutes of walking brought us to Matua Ngahere one of the biggest most impressive trees I have seen, as I stood there staring at the tree I couldnt help looking around for ents.

We checked out a few more trees before heading on as we wanted to reach Paihai in the Bay of Islands that day. We have been

Forest Giant

The largest living Kauri

seeing pubs all over the place many of them with groups of Maori's inside and out but havent stopped as we have been suffering from "once were warriorsitis" eventually we bit the bullet and went into one in a place called Kaikohe, it was nothing like the one in the movie, it had Guinness on tap and all day breakfast and the Maori's didnt try and kill us.

An hour after dinner we arrived in Paihai, it is very much a tourist town, with a multude of accomodation and hostels with night clubs and cheap drinks. We stayed in a hostel called the Salt Water Lodge at which we had the only room with a sea view as the rest had been built out over time.

It was then time for a walk, we needed to go book a cruise for the next day out to Hole in the Rock then a wee bit of shopping and a beer or two before crashing.

Our cruise started at 9 so we had to be on the dock at 8.45am as the boat pulled away from the dock a silly pair of Japanese came running down the dock screaming

Road hazard

A cow or two

and waving their tickets, the captain just ignored them and kept going, classic.

The Bay of Islands consists of 144 islands some of which are little more than rocks, but others have a colourful history with mass murder and mayhem being part of it. The Bay lived up to its reputation and was truely lovely, we encounted some pretty big dolphins, but unfortunately no whales, so we will try to see some on the South Island later. It took about an hour to get to hole in the rock and due to clement weather conditions we were able to sail through it, before returning to a town called Russell which is located across the bay from Paihai.

Russell is a pretty little village with a seedy reputation, it was once known as the hell hole of the Pacific, had a great Jamaican Pizza there, for the most part food here is just better than at home, but saddly no schnitzels. As we were waiting for a ferry back to Paihai we watched a yacht, come up along side the wharf, one of the crew tripped and rather than go in the drink jumped onto a wharf pylon, proceding

Up close and personal

With a dolphin or two - Bay of Islands

to chop himself to pieces on barnacles, silly clown.

On returning to Paihai we headed up the coast a few kilometres to visit the Treaty House at Waitangi, as the holiday (Waitangi Day) is only a few days away, much is happening, in the space of half hour we watched the navy saluting the flag and the Maori Waka putting to see. Waitangi day is like Australia day and celebrates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi in 1840.

They charge $12 to go into see the Treaty House, which I found ridiculous as this is a nationally important site, it seems that I am not the only one who thinks this, as the government is planning to forcibly take over the sight from those currently managing it.

We went for a feed at the Mako bar, watched a bit of Rugby and had a few beers on the way back. We leave for Rotoroua in the morning.

Ps one of my Kiwi pictures came out so I stuck it on this blog.

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