Northland
27 December 2014
Colin
A couple of weeks ago we decided to take a break from boat work and make a little roadtrip around the northern tip of the North Island, NZ. The first day was a little wet, so we headed for the west coast to see the giant Kauri trees. Once upon a time these massive trees were part of large forests covering much of the Northland. However, the wood was prized for it's strength and long, straight grains, so much of the forests fell to the logger's ax. Still, a few of the ancient trees remain, some are quite large and as much as 2000 yrs old. We enjoyed hiking amongst them.
The next day we headed to Cape Reinga at the very northern most tippity of NZ. It was a beautiful day and the views were magnificent. The Maori tell a legend about how the souls of the dead climb down the rocks here and swim the 30 miles out to the Three Kings Islands from where they watch over the people. Pretty cool. There were also a few geocaches here and you can see Wendy being sneaky in the photo. A few more photos uploaded to the NZ gallery too.
The third day was a mixed bag of weather so we did a little beachcombing, then headed over to Ninety Mile beach to drive around on the sand. I'm told that there is nowhere in NZ where you are less than 70 Km from a coastline. So it's quite easy to bounce back and forth from the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean in a single day. Which is exactly what we did. All in all we had a great few days exploring this region.