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Published: October 13th 2008
We've been here a week now and realizing how fast time is going and how much we wanted to do is not going to happen we make some decisions about what to actually do. We head for the Waipoua Forest as planned but decide that we need to get going east and not spend as much time up north as we had hoped. The Waipoua Forest added another 5% gray hair to both of us. We did not see straight road for hours. We thought we would never get there. The maps are very deceiving as the roads look so easy and straightforward. Town names on the map turn out to be little sign posts indicating a road, as we discovered, and everything is uphill it seems. This country is all up and down. I've never seen so many hills and valleys. And I say hills only because I know they actually have mountains and these are not nearly as high as their mountains but when you start getting lightheaded because of the altitude, you wonder when hills become mountains! Almost 3 hours later, we arrive at the forest and trek out to see the famous “God of the Forest”, “Father
of the Forest” and the “Four Sisters”. All these trees are absolutely massive. Our guide last night explained that the tree grows a large canopy and grows tall until the canopy breaks through the other tree tops. The canopy of this tree is very large and wide. Once the tree clears the other trees it stops growing taller and the trunk begins its growth to match the width of the canopy. She showed us a kauri tree that was only 18months old and it looked like a little green shoot with a couple of leaves. That it could grow to the width of 14 m is incredible. Also incredible is that the root system for this tree is very superficial and delicate. Our heart thumping drive was worth it. However we could not spend the rest of the day there so we were off. We passed the sand dune island that was one of the places we would have liked to spend time but only stopped for photos. It looked magnificent. We made it to the KeriKeri Top Ten Holiday Campground around dinner time and we happy to see our beds that day.
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me.
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That pic of us looking up....it wasn't awe. i was hoping it wouldn't fall on me