The far north

Righty…..

Doug dropped us off at the hotel where we would be staying that evening. They had 8 dorm beds at a reasonable price. The annoying thing was that when he dropped it off he asked us for a “gift” or rather a contribution towards the petrol costs of getting there that morning. I mean the cheek! Normally I would ask if I could make a contribution, but the idea of WWOOFing is that you worked for 4 to 6 hours a day for your food and bed, and here he’s asking for money. Funny thing was that Hannah and I genuinely didn’t have much on us so we gave him only a little bit of cash! As he dove away, Hannah and I turned towards one another and we both smiled and said: “FREEDOM!’

We dropped our bags at the hotel, I went to get us some cash (Hannah was having a bit of a cash flow problem since she has to go to a bank and we always seem to be in a town or city when it’s either a Sunday or a public holiday!) and at 8:30am the tour company collected us from outside the hotel. That day wasn’t particularly busy so the bus driver decided that this was the perfect opportunity to take his three grandchildren out for the day (it’s summer holiday here). So all in all, our entire group consisted out of a total of 10 adults and 4 children. The weather was really cooperating too!

We travelled up the east coast (there’s actually just one road up this part of the peninsula) to the tip of the peninsula, and then we drove back down along 90 mile beach (actually only 90km long) on the west coast because of low tide. 90 mile beach is an official road during low tide. It’s rather spectacular though you have to really know your tides and you have to be careful because in certain areas you have quick sand so you don’t want to park there or you’ll lose your car! Hence you can not insure your car for driving along the beach! A bit of a risk but well worth it!

Driving up to the cape, we stopped at a café which is famous for its tree stump staircase. New Zealand is home to one of the 7 Kauri tree species and this species found here is found now where else in the world. They are pretty amazing trees. They don’t grow to be very tall (up to about 60 metres) but after they shoot up to the canopy of the forest to get the light, they grow in width. And boy do they grow! They can grow up to 4000 years old! About 90% of these trees were chopped down by the British settlers in the turn of the last century, and what made is wood so special was the fact that it was very light in weight but solid, and the trunks so fat that if a tree were chopped down and was lying there on it’s side, it would be “taller” than a man. I think the trunks were as big as 5 metres in diameter! Now they are protected trees and if you are caught chopping one down you can be sent to prison! About a week ago, there was a story in the news about how a developer was caught chopping down a Kauri tree, and he got fined $200 000 dollars, and the local residents made him turn the piece of land into a public park as well as forced to plant a couple of more Kauri trees. So don’t chop down a kauri tree!!!!!!!!!!

There is, however, what’s called “swamp kauri” which are huge trunks of kauri trees found in bogs or swamps and apparently they are up to 50 000 years old! There are three layers of this swamp kauri found, and they speculate that 15000, 45000 and 50000 years ago there were huge tidal waves that knocked all the trees down and got preserved in these swamps. These trees are allowed to be dug up and the wood used, which is what several souvenirs are made from in this café we stopped at. One of these trunks had been hollowed out into a spiral staircase. Really amazing!

After a brief visit, we went up the coast and where we stopped for some ice cream (so big and so cheap! YUM!), saw some beautiful isolated beaches and bays, were shown pure natural silica beach sand (bright white) from which glass is made without the need of any processing, had lunch in one of these bays (where we were welcomed by hundreds of sea gulls! and where I got a chance to dip my feet into the Pacific Ocean) before finally reaching Cape Reinga (the northern tip of New Zealand).

This northern point is totally protected, so you’ve got a lighthouse at the end of the peninsula and that about all the buildings you’ll see there! It’s incredible too when you see the beaches here, totally natural and hardly anyone around….just a few tourist buses of course! But I think the most spectacular thing to see here was the crashing of the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea into one another! The Tasman Sea was turquoise in colour, where as the Pacific was a deep blue and where they met was like seeing crashing waves in the middle of the sea rather than on the beach. I enjoyed that.

On our way back down the peninsula, just before we got to 90 mile beach, we came past this huge area covered with huge sand dunes. Almost like a small desert by the sea. Here we went tobogganing – like surfing, but this time down a steep sand dune! So much fun, though really tough to climb up the sand dunes! Good workout! We had to get back to the bus a bit early because all of a sudden the sea mist came in and we were getting wet fast! So we got down to the beach and we started a 75km stretch of driving on the beach. It’s a real surreal thing to do. There are herds of wild horses that are often seen running along this beach, though we didn’t see any. Probably because of the mist, though we did see a car (Mercedes) that had had the misfortune of being almost submerged in the sand because the owners hadn’t planned the tide of the sea in so they had to abandon the car and run for dear life! We also stopped to pick Tua-tuas, which are a bit like muscles, though they have a white shell and live under the sand, which meant we had to dig for them and get wet! Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Before we were dropped off in Mangonui, we stopped at the same café because the bus had to be washed down, so Hannah and I had a nice hot cup of coffee……hmmmmmmmmmmmm. We kept some Tua-tuas in the hope that somebody in the hotel, where we were staying, would know how to prepare them. As it turned out, this very lovely lady, Jill, jumped to the occasion and help Hannah and I to prepare a lovely meal! We boiled half of them and the other half we prepared as fritters. It was gorgeous! We decided to go out and have a drink in the local bar to end the day on a high note. The bar was very cosy and the view amazing! Hannah had fun knocking over her wine once and almost again 2 minutes later after the barman was so kind as to offer a sneaky “refill”. There was also live music: a guy singing with his guitar which was really good!

I woke up Saturday morning to find that I’d been bitten again by mosquitoes and sand flys. Up to this point I did have a couple of bites but by Saturday morning I was starting to look like I had chicken pox, but then only on my legs and hands!!!!!! Agrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhh! We packed once again, walked to the bus stop, got on the bus and enjoyed the 90min bus ride to Paihia once again. We had decided to stop in Paihia again because we really wanted to go to the West coast and see the Kauri tree forest where the biggest and oldest living Kauri trees are just 5 kms apart. We had heard there was a tour going there from Paihia and since once again there was no public transport to that side we had to rely on a tour. When we got there we found out that this tour no longer existed so we were told that we would have to rent a car. Mmmmmmm

We decided to walk to our hostel and relax a bit while pondering what to do. When we arrived there, the owner of the hostel said his friend worked at this car hiring place and that he would find out what deals they had. We found a car for just $35 (about 22 euros) for the day (100kms and insurance included!) so we decided to go ahead and do it!

So at 9am the next day we met the lady, signed the necessary forms and got ourselves a white Toyota. We only found out there and then that it was an automatic…Hmmmmm….how does one drive one of those? Ok, it’s very simple but boy does it get annoying when you have not clutch control and you keep on putting your foot down on the clutch that isn’t there! Lol!

First we drove to this place called Opononi, which is famous for a dolphin that visited the bay in 1956. The dolphin was swimming next to this rowing boat and the people on this boat became aware that it liked having its belly rubbed by an oar. The dolphin became known as “Opo” and he became an overnight sensation. The little coastal town experienced and huge boom in visitors and several newspaper articles are written about him including international newspapers. We went to the museum and watched a 10min black and white video about Opo and it looked almost unreal, the way this wild dolphin just loved swimming in between the people!

From there we went south to the Waipoua Forest where there are several Kauri trees. We enjoyed the incredible views and several short walks in the indigenous forest as well as tree hugging! You can’t get to the biggest trees as they are protected with fences. This is because the root systems of the Kauri trees are very shallow and so trampling on the ground near them can eventually kill them. We saw the largest of the living Kauri trees as well as the known oldest living tree (2000 years old). I had the chance to hug some smaller sized Kauris though they are by no means small….they are just smaller than the biggest ones which is what most tourists just come to see and they just ignore the rest of the beauty.

On the way back to Paihia we stopped at some hot springs which are not really visited by tourists much so they were surprised to find us visiting them. They were great fun. The were 8 pools with different temperatures and some of them were clearer than others but one thing they had in common and that was that they all stank of SULPHUR! One pool was too hot where as the rest were all very pleasant. After a while you don’t really smell the sulphur but just relax! We were there for 2 hours and boy did we feel relaxed after that. Only thing now is that my bikini still smells like sulphur:(

Asleep yet? Will continue some time again. Since all this has happened I've jsut been on another farm so not that much to tell! Take care!