Blogs from Northland, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 27

Wed 20 Dec Drove up the coast of the Bay of Islands today, down to Matauri Bay, down some pretty dicey beach track and then over to Ahipara. Hired some quadbikes and took off down the beach at 80kph, round some rocks. Did a bit of powersliding, ended up on 2 wheels and decided to take it easy after that. Didn't want to do myself an injury so early on in the trip! Took a drive down through the Waipoura Forest and Hokianga Harbour. About a 400km trip today and crashed in Dargaville after a long and eventful day. Thu 21 Dec Drove south, stopping off at the Kauri Museum for a quick look round. Carried on past Auckland, stopped off at Hamilton for lunch and then onto Waitomo where we checked into the backpackers, had ... read more

WE got up had breakkie with the others then we headed to 90 mile beach to do some sandboarding. It was a lot of effort to get on top of the massive dunes but worth it for the board down. Although the last one which was the biggest i couldnt slow down, got to a bump and had a jump then fell off. Didnt get hurt but it was fun. Have nasty blisters on my toes from trying to slow down with my feet. The dunes were pretty amazing up there. Then tried to get to Whangarei. I say try as we broke down. The hills were crazy and the car overheated. Luckily we broke down near a farm. The farmer asked if we were ok and he was a mechanic! Result. He tried to put ... read more

I am having an absolutely amazing time, we have indeed been touring in our once shiny (now very dusty) mitsubishi, tis an automatic and we love it already as have already done over a thousand kilometres and it hasn't boken down yet, fingers crossed, touch wood etc! But it should be ok cos we both have AA cover and we bought a more expensive car to reduce the liklihood of breakdown and/or stranding! We have toured around northland so far, going up the beautiful west coast through amazing Kauri forrest and past stunning coastline, (the beaches are sooo long and straight that they are actually state highways with a national spped limit on them, making them less desirable for sunbathing!). After leaving Auckland we headed west to stay in a small town called dargaville which ... read more

Yep, so we got a next destination set out. We're planning on going and odoing some work at Waiheke Island for a week or so. I don't know exactly how we'll get there, but we can probably get a ride from someone at the hostel or a friend at the house. that's all we have for now. We'll put up more pics and details when we have them.... read more

ok, this blogging marlarky take way to much time, and the internet stations are utterly crap. Today we drove up to the 90 mile beach - yup 90 miles of continuous beach! it was incredibly windy so plenty of surf for as far as you could see. We headed up to Cape Reigna, the 2nd most northly tip of NZ. This was in storm force gales (Auckland was battered by 150km/h winds at the time) and we were pinned against a notice board by wind and hailstones at one point! a man rescued an old lady from being blown away. We batteled it out and survived. Good fun!... read more