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Published: April 11th 2009
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So we’ve stocked up on food, gas and petrol and then make our way north towards the northern most point of NZ. We stay one night at a campsite by the sea and next to an old house called the Subritzky Homestead (we only discovered the latter part when we pulled in to the campsite and saw the sign for the house). We had a nosey around and it’s an old homestead from 1862 which is being renovated and you can see the lovely old range still in the kitchen. I think the campsite is in the old grounds of the house as it’s well tended parkland with large old trees.
After our stay there, we head further north and after a few hours, reach the top - Cape Reinga, which is so spiritual to the Maori population, you’re not even allowed to eat whilst on the premises. It’s known as the place of departing spirits in Maori folklore and after you park up, you walk through an archway and music starts playing - well it’s more of a recording of whale sounds and a poorly played flute which I guess is meant to be haunting and add to the
spiritual atmosphere. To be honest, it just gets on your nerves after a while. The scenery however, is fantastic, overlooking cliffs and you can walk down to the lighthouse which has the signpost giving all the different locations and distances there from. According to the sign, London is a mere 19,026km’s away (which is the furthest place away from the UK on the planet that you could be).
You can also see the meeting of the currents from the 2 different seas - the Tasman sea on the western side and the South Pacific Ocean on the eastern side. It’s a large area not far from offshore where waves break towards each other and it looks a bit turbulent - not quite the 2 ridges that I was expecting to see as far as the horizon (like someone drawing a line - this is your side, and this is the other).
As the scenery was great, I was told that we were coming back at sunset as the views would be amazing, so at 6.30, we made our way back and walked up to a hill near the lighthouse to take loads of photo’s. We weren’t alone in
Sunset
awwwww, what a lovely picture... this idea and were soon joined by a professional photographer and about 8 others. After getting our fill of photo’s, and it becoming properly dark, we drove back to our camp for the night, which was another rural campsite by the DOC (Dept of Conservation) and about 10 minutes down the road in a small bay. We’d had a look round earlier and thought it seemed a nice enough place. There were some really strange “things” on the beach - from a distance, they looked liked small blue mussels, but getting closer, they were made of jelly and had 3 ridged flaps, graduating from clear to blue and were all over the beach. No idea what they were but didn’t fancy walking on them.
The next morning, we woke up after having the worst nights sleep ever. The reason? Mosquitoes. We’d cleared the van of them (ie, killed the little feckers) before going to bed, but somehow, they found a way in, and just as we were falling asleep, we’d hear this high-pitched, winey “ZZZZZZ” right near to our ears and we’d wake up again. I thought it was just one, but after putting the light on in order
The Lighthouse at Cape Reinga
London is a mere 19026km's away... to kill it, we discovered another 7 flying about near the ceiling. “Aghhhhhhh!” full on annihilation required which took at least 15 minutes and by the end, we were wide awake. This happened on several occasions, the last one was at 6.30 so we were not in the best of tempers in the morning.
Along with the mosquitoes were the frequent downpours of really heavy rain, which, if you can imagine how it sounds on the roof of a car, was a touch loud, especially when one is trying to drift off to sleep. The rain would then stop; it would be deathly quiet, and then a wind would strike from nowhere and for 5 minutes the van would be buffeted to and fro before total silence again…
Another reason that kept me awake was the presence of a weird animal “out there”. As I was lying awake, I kept hearing this strange noise. It sounded like it was made by a machine - sort of clacking noise made from winding something up, and then would exhale very quickly - very peculiar, and each time I heard it, it was getting closer to the van! Needless to say,
when the morning came, I was in a rush to get away from the place - to me, it was just plain odd and had a funny feel to it.
So after escaping this camp, we then got back on the road and headed south.
We took a detour to see the largest sand dunes at the top of Ninety Mile Beach. They were HUGE! It was like walking up hills of sand but the sand was hard so it was really difficult to stick your feet in to get a grip. I ended up following Paul in his footsteps, as as soon as you stopped, you’d start sinking. When at the top, you could imagine that you were in a desert. There were some mad people who had hired boards so they could surf down the sides of them. After seeing how steep they were, it took them a long old time to pluck up the courage to go down the boards on their front, but in the end they did it! (Nutters…) It was enough for me just to walk back down after seeing how steep it was - when you looked over the top, you
couldn’t see the bottom - the side appeared to curve away underneath you so you couldn’t see it.
So after getting sand absolutely everywhere so that there was a little pile of it in the footwell of the van, we continued south, south, south down the western side of the country, still nursing out mosquito bites, and discovering that whilst we’d been in the subtropical northlands, autumn had finally arrived in the rest of the country.
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