Blogs from Cape Reinga, Northland, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 7

Well Greame headed back to Auckland to meet his girlfriend as she is coming over for 3 weeks. Suzy and i went on a tour to try and swim with dolphins. We managed to see common and bottlenose dolphins. Unfortunatly we couldnt swim with the bottlenose as they at young ones with them. When we go to the pod there was another tour swimming with then so we got quite excited but basically there have been loads of complaints about that tour group and they shouldnt have been in there. WE totally understood why we couldnt go in but it was disappointing. So then we headed further north and got to cape reinga. The furthest northern point. It is where the tasman and pacific meet and we think we could see the differnce between the two ... read more

Again the weather looked to be in our favour as we headed for the cape. By now we were on the smallest peninsula of New Zealand headed for the very top. It was on this morning that Garreth got a call from his mum in Ireland asking if the Tsunami had hit yet. Until that point we had heard nothing of it. It turns out that an Earth quake north of New Zealand could have possible triggered a Tsunami. Well we weren’t going to let a bit of water get in our way. It had taken us three days to get up here. We continued on our way and went to 90 mile beach. Well if it was going to happen we wanted to get a good view. Despite the lack of a wall of water ... read more

The next destination was 90 mile beach and Cape Reinga. 90 mile beach was pretty sweet, the sand is so compacted you could actually drive your car on the beach. We did take Heather out…she didn’t enjoy it too much but we got her out just fine, unlike some cars that where buried. It was neat to be able to look down the beach and all you could see was shore line, 90 miles of beach…heaven. We then headed even more north to ‘the Cape’. Now ‘the Cape’ is the MOST north point you can get to in NZ, and it is the point where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide. The only way to get there is to drive this crazy windy road where the last 15-20km where dirt…oh yeah more dirt roads, ... read more

Denna morgon vaknar vi pa Kataia motor camp, i den lilla nordliga staden med hoga arbetsloshetstal, klockan 6.38 av var vackarklocka. Vi har forberett oss for var forsta "riktiga" vandring och aker med turistbuss langs ninety-mile-beach, vilken i sjalva verket ar 90 km lang. i slutet av denna blir vi avslappta och vandrar ivag i vinden. Efter nagra timmar, nar vi kommit till nasta strand langs kusten och beslutat oss for att laga lunch upptacker vi att tadstickorna ar kvar i Kaitaia. Hoppsan, det blev visst lite val torftig foda den har vandringen. Extra jobbigt eftersom man aven maste koka vattnet fran de backar man hittar. Vi beslutar oss anda for att fortsatta och hittar ytterligare en massa okanda faglar vaxter och STORA spindlar som vi inte sett forut, innan vi kommer fram till Twilight beach ... read more

The bus will pick us up at 7:15 am, so we are up early. We store our two bags at the hotel and get on the bus with our backpacks. On the way to Cape Reinga we stop at the ancient Puketi Kauri wood forest. The trees are almost as big as our giant redwoods. They have been logged almost to extinction so the forests are now protected. We proceed to Cape Reinga and walk up to the point, with a picturesque lighthouse. From this point, you can look down to where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean come together. It isn’t like a straight line, more like waves going many different directions. A pretty humbling natural phenomenon. The bus driver talks us into being dropped off at Tapotupotu Bay to camp and take hikes ... read more