Day 5-11 - Northland, Bay of Islands, Far North - New Zealand

Day 5 - 11: Northland, Bay of Islands & Far North Region - New Zealand

10-19-09 - Monday morning found us finally departing Auckland for the region referred to as the Northland. Vehicle traffic became much less the further north we moved away for Auckland - thank goodness as learning to drive on the left side in busy Auckland was stressful and everyone was in a hurry while we were not.
North out of Auckland is Highway 1 and smaller roads off Hwy. 1 would carry us to some very remote areas along the NZ east coast. One of our first stops was a vegetable stand where we loaded up on fruit and vegetables to go with several meals for the next couple of days. We stopped off at Sandspit and Snells Beach both in semi-protective bays on the Pacific. Snells Beach had a long and beautiful beach area that we can imagine would be full of people when the weather gets warmer later on in the summer. Did I say it is still cold here in NZ? Record lows in 50 years. OK so we headed to Tawharanui Regional Park that is a protected open sanctuary for a number of native bird species. The beach area here was quite rugged with what appears to be basalt outcroppings from volcanic events from NZ’s early formation. Up in these formations you could find small pools of water with small ecosystems within them. There is camping here for about $10.00/person with water and toilets but that’s about it. Since it was still early in the afternoon we had planned to continue driving north but we did this only after spending some quality time enjoying the beach, bird life and quiet surroundings. We met a fisherman on the way out who had just brought in some scallops that looked sooooo good. He said they would taste good that night smoked. I could only dream about how thaqt meal was going to be. We tried to look pitifully but it didn’t work. So we continued along the narrow road through the small towns of Leigh and Pakiri to a very nice Holiday Park (campground) adjacent to a beautiful beach on the Pacific Ocean. There were miles of undeveloped coastline in this area and we pretty much had it much to ourselves.

10-20-09 -Tuesday - Oh my God! I discovered the inside rear view mirror in the car. Wow - how did I not see that for so many days. Perhaps because I kept looking up and to the right to see cars behind me as I would in my car back at home. Alright, it is more difficult than you can imagine when everything is reversed in these right hand drive vehicles. Did I tell you I have nearly worn out the wiper blades thinking that was the turn signal stick? OK - I’ve gotten much better with all this now but its been a driving adventure here in NZ and this is only the first few days. Well we continue our march to the north and returned to Hwy 1 and drove into Whangarei, a large community (45,000) for the Northland region standards. We checked out the information center and then located Whangarei Falls to the east of town. This is about an 80 foot high waterfall that crosses an ancient basalt lava flow. We enjoyed a 30 minute circular hike down to the bottom of the falls and back to the car park. Brief round showers interrupted our journey back up but that nothing new so far. We left Whangarei with the intentions of camping in Russell in the Bay of Islands. The old Russell Road was our choice to get there (longer and slightly rougher on a mostly unsealed road - see photo of road) as opposed to going by way of the car ferry. Ok we wanted to save a few $$s by going the long way and perhaps more scenic. It was not scenic, just a rough gravel road. Russell (1,140), was a nice surprise with just a few people milling around the historic town. This town was referred to as the “Hellhole of the Pacific” in the earliest days. This place would be full of ships carrying supplies, people, exports from the islands and other items to and from Australia and the far reaches of Europe and the Indies. We could imagine that there would have been a few bars and other establishments here that would welcome the sailors after a long long voyage on the Pacific Ocean or Tasman Sea. While we were there, the wind was tearing across the Bay of Islands so we were bundled up to stay warm. We found the campground, setup our tent and then were surprised with a gift of some fresh Snapper from the owner of the campground. He had caught the fish that afternoon and he was giving some away to the few campers staying with them. We grilled the Snapper and enjoyed eating it with some pasta, vegetables and hot tea. Yummy!!! We had a good dinner conversation with some Australians on holiday from Queensland and two Italians spending several weeks in NZ and continuing on to Australia, Vietnam and Thailand.

10-21-09 - Wednesday we broke camp, headed up to Flag Staff Hill where in the early days the British had erected a flagpole from which flew the British. Over a period of years, with disagreement with the British and Maoris, the flag pole was cut down 4 times. Today there is a pole like structure but no flag. The views from the Flag Staff Hill were incredible. If you come to Russell this is a must see location! You could picture a couple of hundred ships anchored in this large protective harbor. You have to sweep 270 degrees from the Russell community all the way around to the exit of the harbor to the Pacific Ocean plus numerous inlets off the harbor. This place was great for ships in those days. Well we left Russell and took the nearby car ferry ($10/car and $1.00 for each passenger) at Okiato to Opua (10 minute ferry ride as opposed to the 45 minute unpaved road drive). We proceeded to the town of Paihia to visit the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and Treaty House where the much contested Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the Maori chiefs and the British Crown and establishing British sovereignty.

Continuing north we headed to Kerikeri, Doubtless Bay and the Karikari Peninsula. We stayed at the NZ Dept of Conservation campground at Matai Bay. Oh my goodness was this a picturesque location. Photos do not do this location justice. This was an outstandingly beautiful bay - mostly sand beach but some volcanic rock outcroppings. We shared this with about 7 other campers - what a deal. We discovered here that my MRS muti-fuel stove was not working - oh no! Yep - cold dinner and cold breakfast food. We tried to keep things in perspective here, if the early explorers could deal with the challenges of their day well we certainly can make it through a couple of meals that were not hot. Although I did miss my night and then morning hot tea.
While we were there, we jumped across the ridge on the west side of the point at Matia Bay where we saw miles and miles of undeveloped beaches directly on the Pacific and then watched our first sunset over the south Pacific. As a bonus, we had a long conversation with a local fisherman/woodworker/cattle farm manager who had just brought up a 12 pound snapper and another fish. He even offered his camping stove while we visited the far north if we wanted it, but we assured him we could have the stove up and running.

10-22-09 - Thursday found us braking camp at Matia Bay. I found a small garage and had them blow out my MSR stove of some debris that I figured was keeping the stove from working. Yep - that fixed it and warm meals would soon be following. We then continued our northward drive towards the Far North that would carry us out to Cape Reinga near the extreme northern point of New Zealand. We stopped along the way at the Te Paki sand dunes where people can pay to toboggan down the high dunes. These dunes are steep like the Egyptian pyramids. We chose to take the hike out to the Tasman Sea across several of the mountain dunes. We were exhausted when we were only about ½ mile from the Tasman and decided to follow the Te Paki stream back to the car park. For any future travelers wanting to get to the Tasman from the car park, following the streambed downhill as it is much much easier than tacking the 60 to 70 degree high dunes. We then left the dunes and headed to Cape Reinga. Part of this drive is still on an unsealed, and very rough at times road. They are a year or two away from completing this work so expect a slow go on about 15 kim of the road if you’re headed this way. We hiked ¼ mile from the carpark to the lighthouse at the end of the cape. Cape Reinga is in fact 3 km shy of being the most northerly point in NZ. That location is Surville Cliffs just to the east and extremely remote. When we left the cape, we camped out at the DOC campground (toilets, cold showers and great beach) a few kilometers away with 5 other campers. We did some hiking along the beach and some of the volcanic outcroppings.

10-23-09 - Friday we began our journey back to the south down the peninsula to the small town of Ahipara. There is virturally nothing here to do but relax, enjoy the start of “90 Mile Beach” (more like 60 miles), some surfing and body boarding. We stayed at the Ahipara Backpacker/Motor Camp to do some much needed washing of clothes, take a hot shower, play some ping-pong and catch up with e-mails on the Internet. For future travelers coming here wanting to use the Internet be aware that they must use Carrier Pigeons in this area to transport data. Yes it was very slooooooowwwwww in transmitting and receiving - and they charged us for this!

10-24-09 - Saturday we headed out of Ahipara north along the west coast scenic highway. We hot to the small town of Kohukohu to catch the car ferry over to Rawene. There was not much to see and do in Rawene although it holds some valuable history of early native New Zealanders. It was the third European settlement and the place where Kupe came into New Zealand. We headed west to the coast to Opononi and Omapere. This again was another fantastic harbor with some interesting contrasts. On one side were these huge yellow/white sand dunes coming down to meet the beautiful turquoise waters of the harbor, then mixing with the green hills on the south side of the harbor. All in all a very nice place to hang out and enjoy the scenery and crashing waves off the Tasman Sea as it met the harbor. Ultimately we headed on to our destination which was the Kauri trees in Waipoua Forest. These are the last great stands of trees that the sailors found valuable for ship building, lumber in general and exporting back to Europe. We visited two sites where you could hike to several of these monster trees. Photos do not nearly tell the story of the immense size of the trees. Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest) has a girth of 16.4 meters. Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest) had a 13.8 meter girth and 51 meters high. After an hours walk through this forest, we headed to the DOC campground located in a Kauri Forest regeneration area. To say that the road through this area has a few curves in an understatement. This road makes the Tail of the Dragon in Western North Carolina like a boring bike ride. There are sooooo many tight curves that they don’t even post signs that a curve is coming nor how tight it is. Sometimes we felt we were doing 360s on top of each other. One thing for sure it greatly improved my driving skills on the left side of the road. We got to the campground and met two travelers from Denmark, he had purchased a stuffed Kiwi bird (see photo in blog). We also met for the first time on the trip to Americans from Florida. Shelly and Brittany just came from Fiji, now in New Zealand and heading to Australia, Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and India. They said at that point they’ll begin planning the remaining schedule of their trip. Their website is: www.chasingsummer.us. In our conversations that night it was also interesting how we all had similar problems driving on the left side of the road. The over use of the windshield wiper (thinking it was the turn signal) and discovering the inside rear view mirror. All similar issues to our right hand drive vehicle.

10-25-09 - Sunday we awoke to the strangest bird sound. I would bet Chuck and Lola would be racing out of their tent to check this bird out. It sounded like some electrical malfunction or a decent imitation of R2D2 from Star Wars. I did get up (about 5:45am) but not with the primary intentions of locating this bird.
The Kiwi’s Wacky Wiring - I just have to take a moment to say any electrician from the States would find the electrical plugs and wiring here and mystery. At most of the Hostels, Holiday Parks and other locations, it is difficult to find electrical plug outlets. The last place we were staying, the community room/TV lounge was about 600 square feet. On two walls you could not find an electrical outlet, one the other two walls had one outlet each. Talk about energy conservation! And if this is enough, if you plug in your laptop or try to heat water from that plug, you better switch on the tiny on/off switch to the left of the plug or you want have any juice. Kitchens are the same. All the ovens are hard wired to an on/off outlet switch. You have to make sure your turn the switch on or turning any and all the dials on the oven will do you no good. Just makes for some interesting situations when you’re trying to get something going and you’ve forgotten to turn the on/off switch on to the unit.

We made it to Matakohe which is the location of the Kauri Museum. We paid $30 to get into this museum and it was the best buy yet. The history of the Kauri Forest, loggers, machinery, culture, living styles, etc. was laid out in front of us so well. Many pieces of equipment from the late 1800’s was housed here showing how these large trees were cut up and transported. Anyone visiting NZ should come to this museum!!
We left Matakohe and ventured further south back to Auckland to see how well my driving skills have progressed. We’re now at a free internet Mobil Petro Station on Mt. Eden Road - did I say Free Internet!! So that’s our travels for the Northland. Stay tuned for more adventures. Cheers!

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Part of trip: Samoa & New Zealand Trip - 2009/2010

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