New Zealand Part 4 Paihia

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Boat rocking and sand in odd places!!!

Did you know there was this tiny peninsula above Auckland, which is just mystically referred to as “the northlands”? well I didn’t, I had always thought it was just part of Auckland, but turns out this is one of THE main places to holiday for Kiwi’s - so we figured what’s good enough for them must be even better for us!!. We arrived at the seaside town of Paihia and checked into our hostel. It was just a few minutes from the beach and a very new and chilled place, but far enough away from the bus stop that dragging our bags was a strain (well for me anyway). Apparently the only 5 star hostel in New Zealand, which seems a bit odd coz if it’s over a few stars then usually it becomes a hotel? We were in a modern 4 bed dorm with people already in it; everything was new and shiny, but it was just a shame the whole place smelt of vom!! Turns out the guy we were sharing with had been ill the night before and god knows what he had used to clean up with but it must have still been present somewhere, we had to get out!

Being hungry (which is surprising given the smell of vomit) we had some cheap dinner that night at a little cocktail shack (fish and chips and a beer for $7 not bad!!) literally next door to the hostel - great for staggering distance. But unfortunately we had a really early start next morning so had to turn in early, even though the smell of vomit still hadn’t gone from our room!! This great little cocktail shack however was adjoined to a bar that had karaoke (or if not then they shouldn’t be paying someone to sing like that) ALL NIGHT. It’s the first time I wished I had ear plugs to block out the noise, but unfortunately the set I had were up my nose to stop the smell of vomit!!!

Next morning up early we had a breakfast of our left over porridge sachets from the USA (reminding us slightly of being ill in Flagstaff -yuck) and some borrowed milk (hey we’re in a hostel) before waiting outside with a group of others for our bus. Most people waiting were in our age bracket and younger but there was one couple in retirement years waiting too. I could see the nerves in their eyes as they watched groups of youngsters getting on the buses that arrived but no one close to their age in sight. When our articulated transformer type bus arrived we sat at the front as usual (this has become something we do regularly now, always at the front like an old couple - but Nath insists it’s so we get a better view). There was some heavy rock music playing quite loud and the driver (Called Dai - mother was welsh) was singing along as he welcome everyone on. However as the older couple got on behind us the music seemed to get louder just as the words “you’re a mother f**ker” blasted over the radio. The driver who had been doing his cool dude act and singing along as we entered all of a sudden turned the music down, apologised and developed an English “terribly sorry” accent in a matter of seconds. Needless to say they weren’t due on this bus and their “mature” tour bus pulled up just behind us. Don’t know who was more relieved them or our bus driver.

Our first stop was some random rainforest area with an old huge tree in it. The kiwis love their heritage and their native trees and these things are admittedly huge and now endangered, but at the end of the day it was a few trees and thus a little dull. So we all took pictures for each other hugging the tree - you know the usual…Nath hung back and when the crowds had moved on we took our shot - namely Nath appearing to urinate up the tree. This is becoming his signature pose for our trip but hey at least its different. Thankfully we moved on from there (hoping the rest of the trip would be more interesting!), collected some lunch from “the last piece of civilisation we would see for days!!!” as Dai kept preaching to us, and headed up the main highway 1 for hours. Now this is the main highway that connects the north of the north island with the south of the south island and I guess once they got far enough past Auckland they deicide they had done enough and that no one would really come up this far so just stopped. Needless to say half the journey was like off road driving, which in our huge bus/truck thing was an excellent if not slightly sickening drive!.

We arrived at Cape Reinga, the most northern point in New Zealand and unlike John O Groates they aren’t making it up! ( the most “northly” point of the UK is in fact a place called Dunnet point). However there was about as much to do/ see there as there was back home, but at least the weather was better by far. It is more of a spiritual visiting place with the Maori race believing that your spirit will travel all the way to this point and jump off into the ocean to be greeted by your ancestors and taken to “heaven”. Lovely really and I did take a moment to think of people that had passed etc, so that was worth the journey on it own. Sometimes you get so bogged down with travel arrangements and problems that you almost forget where you are and what an amazing trip it is, so this was a moment to be thankful for what we were doing.

This point was also where the Pacific Ocean met the Tasmanian Sea and you could actually see the different coloured waters meet. It looked rough though so you wouldn’t see us swimming in it! After this we went down to a beach on the East coast (Pacific Ocean) for some lunch in the sun which was just lush - taking time out to write things in the sand, it was so hot by this point, making a nice change from the rain in Auckland. Then we made our way to the sand dunes to do some surfing!!! Now Dai had been telling us how dangerous it was and how we MUST follow the rules of which there was one; what ever happens don’t let go. Great I can do that I thought and was half excited half nervous as we approached. On arriving at the dunes this soon turned to 100% nerves, they were huge (The dunes and the nerves now!!!). Further down there were other tour groups of “oldies” as Dai put it on the smaller slopes - could I not go over there I thought!! Anyway I decided I would give it ago, this trip is about pushing me out of my comfort zone after all. So Nath and I dragged ourselves and our little boggie boards up the dune, and when I say drag I mean it, these dunes were so high and made of sand (obviously) that every step forward we made was often a step back again. Not to mention the strong wind whipping the sand up into our faces. We got to the top eventually, totally out of breath and swearing we would never go up again. We nervously watched everyone go down and Nath went before me. Now you don’t surf like you do in the water and you don’t sit on it like if you were on snow; you lay face down (so it’s a little more intimidating) with your legs hanging off the back of the board. I got to the front of the queue and had already decided I couldn’t do it and the guy was about to let me walk back down the dune, but he said “let me just try and convince you it will be ok”. so I laid down and he showed me how to slow myself down and then pretty much just pushed me on my way………it was the best thing ever!!! I’m so glad I did it, so glad in fact I did it again and would have gone a third time if it wasn’t purely for the walk up the dune being too much! Nath loved it as well and managed 3 trips down and was actually the last one to get back on the bus. For the rest of the trip I was referred to as the scared London girl after needing more encouragement than most (only on the first run tho!!)


After this with everyone tired and a little wet (as if you didn’t stop in time on the dune you skidded onto and into a little stream at the bottom) we drove 5 mins to 90 mile beach to see the “Hole in the Rock” and dip our toes in the Tasmanian sea. (Pacific before lunch and Tasmanian after lunch) We then sat back and enjoyed the drive down 90 mile beach, which as the name suggests is a really long beach. Not 90 miles apparently, Dai reckoned that as Australia had a 70 mile beach New Zealand had to have one bigger!! We drove past cars that had got caught in the sand and were now metal skeletons. Didn’t pass more than 3 people in the whole stretch though and those we did had proper 4x4 vehicles to make sure they could get off the beach afterwards.


On the way back down the rubbish highway one, we stopped off at a shop with a load of souvenirs and furniture made out of the Kauri trees Dai had been on about earlier, explaining that they were a protected species. Apparently the wood for the souvenirs was from ancient forests which had been preserved in bogs or something, so they hadn’t cut any living trees down to make them…..Phew! The Kauri trees are huge, so huge that the one in the middle of the shop had a spiral staircase carved inside it for you to access the second floor! Further on down the highway we stopped at the “best fush and chups shop” in New Zealand (which we had been told about from two other independent kiwi’s) they were nice I must admit and with a full tummy we dozed o the long drive back to Paihia. That evening we were knackered so vegged in the hostel, but didn’t manage to get as early a night as we hoped as we got chatting (or talked at anyway) to some palaeontologist from Denver. We spent the rest of our time there trying to avoid him just so we could stick to our schedule!!

The next day we were due to go on “rock the boat” an over night cruise but this wasn’t docking till the afternoon, so we spent the day in the boiling hot sun, biking around the area (the hostel rented these out for free - how nice is that!!). As you’d expect this is a town that without a car there isn’t much in the surrounding area unless you want to do water sports, so we did some biking and walking that day and then just vegged whilst we waited for our boat. We’d had to re arrange our bags into a small carry on as the web page had asked due to limited room on the boat, but as we were waiting on the pier people were joining us that looked like they’d brought the entire contents of their house. Now the boat is an old car ferry they have transformed into a “cruise ship” for about 30 people at a time, so it was rusty looking and quite small, but the best money spent so far!! I would recommend it to anyway coming this far. We arrived on the boat via a little fishing boats (was just like Fiji again but not as warm) and got settled into our rooms. We were in the cheapest room as this trip wasn’t very cheap, so were in a hostel style room with 6 bunks. Not a problem normally in a your average hostle sized room but this was a tiny cabin with smaller beds so needless to say I had to go on the top bunk as Nath would have knocked himself out if he had tried to sit up at any point!!

We then went down and got chatting with the other passengers and crew. The crew were great, mainly our age and very friendly making sure they learnt everyone’s names and that we all had what we wanted. This trip was all about customer service! We then started our first activity something that would bring us all together and help us relate to one another …..Shooting at a metal duck being towed behind us with an air rifle…I can’t think of anything that says group hug more!!! I did rubbish as expected but looked like I knew what I was doing at least and Nath swears he hit the duck all three times, which should have meant he go t a free drink but he didn’t. Only one guy hit the duck every time, and I don’t want to make a stereotype here but you’d have thought the same thing to - that he had spent his summer holidays at a training camp in the middle east!!!! ·

We then were all given a fishing rod and as the boat floated out of the bay into the sea and onto the bay of islands, everyone sat back and waited for a bite. In our case we waited and waited and waited but others managed to do quite well. We didn’t even manage to catch some old rubbish which others seemed very good at fishing out of the water. Whilst all this was going on the crew set about cooking our BBQ dinner and as the night set in we all sat round a huge long captain table set up and had our dinner in candle light, it was great!! After this we then got ready to go out night kayaking as we had moored by one of the outer island we had reached whilst eating. The idea of this was that only the leader had a head torch to make sure we were ok but the rest of us floated around in the pitch black. This allowed us to see the phosphorescent algae that were in the water. This stuff was cool - every time you moved your hand or paddle in the water you disturbed them and they glowed bright green. It was like kayaking in bright green spaghetti. We then kayaked further into the dark towards an island to see if we could disturb any fish and make them cause lines of bright green as they swam away through the algae. We didn’t manage it but Nath did manage to get stuck on a rock sticking out of the water that he obviously hadn’t seen as he paddled over.

We then got back to the boat where we had the option of night swimming, which I wasn’t brave enough to do, in fact only two lads did it in the end. I dunno something about pitch black deep water makes me nervous! So instead we stood and looked at the sky for some time - The stars that night were the most amazing I’d ever seen, so clear and so many you just don’t get to see anything like that living in a town. We could even see the Milky Way - how cool is that we even saw a couple of shooting stars. Following the star gazing we all sat up till the early hours with some of the crew and passengers, singing along and listening to one of the guys playing the guitar. Its amazing at the number of words to songs you cant recall without the track playing in the background. One of the guys playing was European and didn’t know all the tunes and the other guy didn’t know all the words but we all just mumbled our way through as best we could! It was great they even had an open fire you could sit in front of and warm yourself after kayaking (not that the fat selfish ozzy girls bothered to mover over for us to do), which if course I spent the whole evening in front of.

Slept ok that night although at one point I forgot about the low ceiling and hit my head! But being up early that morning was just beautiful, so peaceful and calm, watching the sea glisten under the sunrise. It was just great I could have floated there like that all day and the fact I was a bit tired just didn’t matter. We weren’t able to have a wash or anything as not only did the lighting go off at about 10pm the previous night, so did the hot water in the one shower they had on board so I did feel a bit wretched from that point of view, but the day was about to get even better. As we made our way towards some more of the islands we literally bumped into a pod of dolphins, which spent a good half hour following us around. We got some great shots (well Nath did mine were all of fins) and it was really nice to see proper wild dolphins for once. We then moored over by another island to get ready for some snorkelling, but as we stood there in our bathers we noticed more and more people putting the optional wet suit on, did we really need one I thought? Well we decided to get one in the end and I’m SO glad we did, it was frickin freezing!! It took your breath away a little as you jumped in (or fell in in my case) and I couldn’t snorkel for long before feeling like I needed to get out. The water wasn’t the clearest as it was all turbulent by the rocks but you could see quite well and we even managed to spot a sting ray resting on the bottom of some rocks (although it took several attempts of Nath pointing directly at it for me to even notice the bloody thing! Which was surprising really as it was huge).

Once on board and dry again Nath and I then accepted the option of kayaking to the island we were stopping at for lunch, but I didn’t realise this was actually an option as we could have actually just gone in the little motorised boat. Wish I’d gone in the boat as the sea was quite rough and it took ages to paddle that far. For Nath it took even longer as he hung back to make sure one of the ladies was getting on ok (she needed rescuing by the boat in the end). We finally joined the group on the island that had gone ahead on a walk. This was a killer straight after kayaking but we made it eventually. It was a lovely look out and the sun was shining again but all I cared about was that it was lunch time and I wanted to get back to some food before I killed someone!!!

Lunch was a picnic on the beach and with it over we headed back to the boat (not kayaking this time thank god) for our couple of hours journey back to Paihia. In that time Nath and I played some games of pool which was hilarious what with the balls rolling into pockets on their own - I think it was the first time I’ve won against Nath so all I need form now on is an old car ferry on rough waters and I might stand a chance!!! With our trip over we waved goodbye to everyone and made our way back to the hostel who had kindly kept our bags for us (well not kindly I guess as we were booked in again that night before heading home but anyway) it was a great trip and well worth the money. With a few hours of sun left that afternoon, I took the hostels little cavalier dog out for a walk as he looked like he needed it! and then we settled in to watch some TV to stop our aching bodies hurting anymore. Unfortunately we had another early start the next day to catch our bus back to Auckland and then a second bus to New Plymouth to start at Hearing Dogs.

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Photos

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Everyone on the tour hugged this sacred tree but Nath.... Well Nath did what Nath does best!!

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wow a big tree

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Tree hugging

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Cape Reinga - the most northly point of NZ

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Erm....

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Where your spirit departs to the afterlife

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The meeting of the Pacific ocean and the Tasmanian sea

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Long way from home

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Sand finger!!