Cape Reinga

We drove up from Aukland the day after our arrival and stayed in a place called Kaitia. W stayed at the Wayfarer motel. Our host, Dave, was very helpful.
We left in the morning to go up to Cape Reinga. We were told it was 112km's away and would take a couple of hours. The last 21km's are gravel and that we should take it slowly.
We have a 2 litre focus. We want our Chrysler back as the focus feels so small and underpowered.
The trip up as we were told took 2 hours. A couple of times we stopped for photo's. One time as Chloe got out of the car a bus came past doing a silly speed in a big cloud of dust slidding all over the place. We waited for the dust to settle and then drove off. As we got over the next hill we could see about 1km in the distance and the bus had dissapeared. I wouldn't want to meet one of those coming the other way on a blind bend, and there are a lot of blind bends.
There is a load of building work going on at the cape so you have to walk best part of 1km to get to the light house.
It was a clear day and the beaches and cliffs were fantastic from the cape itself. None of which are accesible as it is a wildlife conservation area.
The journey back was a little quicker as I got the hang of driving on the gravel. It's a bit like controlled aquaplaning. Great fun but it would have been a lot more fun in a 4x4 or a rear wheel drive car. I kept getting told off for sliding all over the place and handbrake turns!!

On the road a bit further down the tarmac bit we nearly hit a herd of cows being driven from one field to another. It was funny watching one of the cows get annoyed with the sheep dogs as they were pestering its calf. The dogs got scared and ran away, but the cows kept mooooving.

We are now spening a couple of nights at www.driftwoodlodge.co.nz which is fantastic. We have a unit, two bedrooms and a little kitchen on the beach. I think the girls are completely worn out so we are spending the day doing nothing.
I am writing this from a place called Manganoui (spelling?) and have just seen dolphins playing in the harbour. It was fantastic. Even the local got excited and a couple got on to thier kyaks and went after them as they went back out of the harbour. Unfortunately they didn't catch them.

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