Northland — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

This is a region on the North Island that encompasses most of the northern end, north of Auckland. The Bay of Islands that I described in my last post is also included in this designation; but in our mind “Northland” is the sparsely populated area north of that, stretching from coast to coast.

Our main goal was to reach Cape Reinga, which is quite near the northernmost point of the country. It made for a very long day of travel, taking 3+ hours just to get there -

That view above is actually before you reach Cape Reinga Lighthouse…

… and this was taken from the lighthouse -

The waters of the southern Pacific Ocean clash forcefully with those traveling east from the Tasman Sea -

In Maori, Cape Reinga/Te Rerenga Wairua means “the leaping off place of the spirits” -

The solitary tree you see clinging to the bare rock is a sacred pohutukawa, and is regarded as the gateway to the underworld -

And that is the northernmost point of NZ. Steve’s panorama may give you a sense of the grandeur of the place -

On the west coast, just south of the Cape are Giant Sand Dunes…

… that we opted not to visit, due to numerous other stops on our long itinerary for the day, and the fact that we have visited enormous sand dunes in Colorado and Peru. I just mention them, in case you like to do sandboarding and would want to visit them on your own trip.

Driving away from the Cape, I was struck by the uniqueness of the red volcanic soil. Everywhere else in the country, soil is either black or brown.

Further down the east coast is Rarawa Beach…

… a huge expanse of blindingly white fine sand…

… that nicely showcased these Pied Stilts -

Continuing our drive back south, we just had to stop in at 90 Mile Beach on the west coast -

Yes, you could drive on it for the entire length, but we didn’t have 4WD nor the time to devote to that.

It’s actually only 55 miles long, but the early Europeans traversing it on horseback took three days to do so, and they knew that they usually covered 30 miles in a day, hence the name. They didn’t account for the slower pace of the horses in the sand.

It was definitely impressive, and quite empty.

We finally reached our lodgings in Opononi on the west coast after a 10 hour day of driving and exploring (probably our longest of the trip). The next morning we got to see the awesome view from our deck -

We had a nice short day planned. Along the way I got this shot from Pakia Hill overlook, highlighting various shades of blue and green -

We were aiming for the Waipoua Forest, which is the home of Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), the largest kauri tree in New Zealand -

We tried to give a sense of the awesome scale with this video (open this email in your browser by clicking the link at the end) -

The girth (circumference) of the tree is 45 ft, and it is estimated to be 2,000 yrs old. Kauris are second only to Giant Sequoias in the US as the largest trees in the world.

Their bark has very beautiful patterns…

… and the number of different ferns and mosses they harbor was quite interesting -

We enjoyed wandering the forest paths, admiring plants and fungi…

… both small and large -

That picture was Steve’s composition. He’s developing quite the eye!

We finished this part of our trip by visiting the Kauri Museum in Matakohe, and highly recommend it.

that was a phone booth sized sitting area within a 35,000 year-old kauri stump recovered from a swamp

We dropped off our car in Auckland (Steve will give you a post with all the numbers and some trivia), and spent 2 nights in the city. We visited the zoo, just so we could finally see kiwis. There were a couple of times during our travels that we could have driven an hour each way at night, to walk in a dark forest, hoping to see them. We passed on those, and opted for the easy way out with the Kiwi House at the zoo. The lights are very low during the day so you can watch these nocturnal feeders going about their business. The next video is dark, and you may have to watch it a couple of times to better make out the kiwis - they are the dark lumps about the size of chickens, moving around.

Here are some taxidermy specimens so you can get an idea of what they really look like -

All right. So this is the last post from New Zealand. What an awesome trip! I just couldn’t decide which picture I wanted to end with, so lucky you, you get a series of my favorite places.

So long for now!