The Far North - Cape Reinga

From Paihia we drove up along the coast and stopped at Te Ngaire Bay and went for a walk along the beautiful beach, getting back into the van again just in time to miss the rain. As it kept raining we didn’t stop until lunch, though there are many other fabulous bays along the east coast. We had our lunch at Tokerau Beach during another dry spell, again enjoying the blue sea and sky and sandy beach.

From there we drove west to Kaitaia and booked ourselves onto a bus trip to Cape Reinga for the next day. We chose a more expensive trip that went to one extra place, but as we were the only two to book it, we were later switched to a different operator.

As there is no nice campsite in Kaitaia we went further west to the coastal town of Ahipara for the night. Before dinner we went for a run up the famous 90 Mile Beach (it’s actually only a little over 60 miles long). The Beach is a main highway so it’s possible to drive along it. We had thought about driving it ourselves, but with varying reports that we’d be fine, we ought to have a four wheel drive, and stories about cars getting stuck and never getting out, we decided a bus trip was the safer option. Running along it was strange as the scenery was exactly the same all the way – the sea on our left and sand dunes on our right and the beach going on as far as we could see. It felt like we hadn’t gone all that far until we turned around and saw how far away the end of the beach was. There is a special marathon run on the length of the beach every March. We met one person who did it who said that it was one of the hardest things to do, as the scenery is the same for the entire duration of the marathon so you never feel like you’re making any progress.

We got up bright and early the next morning and caught the bus in Kaitaia. The first stop was at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom, a shop, workshop and café where we were advised by our tour guide to keep our wallets firmly in our pockets. Kauri trees are giant trees that were used to make war canoes and many other things when people first settled in New Zealand. Much of the trees were cut down and the remaining trees are protected as much as possible. There are huge numbers of ancient stumps that have been found in the swamps in Northland and the Ancient Kauri Kingdom has created some beautiful carvings from them. The showpiece of the gallery there is an upright kauri log that has had a spiral staircase carved into it bringing you up to the mezzanine level of the shop. It is really amazing how big these stumps are. The tour guide was quite right about watching your wallets though. There was beautiful furniture, sculptures, clocks and much much more carved from the wood, most with rather big price tags. Though the staircase is not for sale, there was a large sofa with a price tag of $55,000. My credit card limit is not that big…

Moving on from there, we went to Rawawa Beach to see the white silica sand that is prominent in some of the more northern beaches. They mine it, and now take it from a slightly out to sea, rather than directly from the beaches as they did initially. Someone finally got a bit worried about erosion!


Later we stopped for lunch at Tapotupotu Bay, yet another brilliant beach. Again we were lucky enough to be back in the bus when the rain started, and it kindly stopped as we arrived in Cape Reinga, almost the most northerly point of New Zealand. (The most northerly point isn’t easily accessible and we didn’t feel like hiking for several hours to get there!) A lighthouse marks the point and in the water below you can see the waves where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean.

While we were at the lighthouse there was a young couple there who had just completed a one-year tour of the entire country on horseback raising money for Canteen, a charity for young people (teenagers) with cancer. We had actually heard of the charity already as Barracuda, the sea kayak company, had sponsored a man who kayaked around the five main lakes of New Zealand in seven days for Canteen.

From there we drove down quickly down Te Paki Stream in order to avoid being caught up in it’s quicksand… After finding somewhere safe to park there, we hopped out and picked up our toboggans and sprinted up the steep sand dune beside us (or at least the first five metres, getting gradually slower after that). Tobogganing down the sand dune was great fun, and I was quite impressed to see that everyone on the bus, old or young, healthy or infirm, gave it a go at least once. Sean and I had three goes before the bus got going again and we were onto 90 Mile Beach.

Though we had a few stops along the way on the beach, for the most part we were driving along quickly, given that the beach is treated as a normal road and has a speed limit of 100km/h. Then it was a trip back to the Ancient Kauri Kingdom to wash the sand off the bus and home.

The night before at the campsite we had met a group of people members of YHA (Youth Hostelling Association) including the Chairman and CEO who were having a meeting there that weekend. They kindly invited us to join them for dinner after our trip to Cape Reinga so we had a lovely evening with them, complete with a mountain of food from the barbeque. We joined them for breakfast the next morning too before heading off to the Gum diggers Park, which was the extra place we had planned on seeing with the tour bus the day before. Around 1900 the park was very busy with people digging for kauri gum, which was used for varnish, linoleum and other products. Unfortunately, it was a swamp, and when we arrived it was pouring rain, but we put on our waterproofs and went walking around the park anyway. By the time we were leaving it was pretty hard to avoid the deep puddles that had appeared on the path! The park was good, but the next day we went to a museum in Matakohe, which had much more information about the gum-digging era, and was indoors! I’ll tell you more about that later.