"An Around-the-World-Ticket for Two, Please."

The last few days!

Posted by Sarah O'Neill , Sunday, 15 May 2011 02:44

On Wednesday we got up to drive to Whangarei (pronounced with an F!), I felt so stiff and achey and then remembered the rafting and sledging and it all made sense! The drive there was pretty wet and miserable, as was the rest of the day! We decided it would be a good 'sorting day', getting any bits and bobs we needed for Fiji and planning and booking the USA leg of our trip. We were able to book all our greyhound tickets to Vancouver, San Francisco and LA and Vegas, and most of our accomodation, which was brilliant! Since it was raining it was a good use of our time, and meant it was nearly all booked! In the evening we watched the final Lord of the Rings, and although we watched them out of order I did enjoy them more this time around, but mostly because we had been to The Shire, and it was all NZ scenery!

The next morning we drove to Kaitaia which is the best base for the Cape Reinga tours. We stopped for lunch at a little beach, but had to stay in the van and look at the nice view as it started to rain! Thankfully the weather improved for the afternoon! Cape Reinga is the most northely peninsula, and is also where you can see the meeting of the Tasman and Pacific seas. It is a sacred place for the Maori's as they believe all spirits leave NZ from Cape Reinga to return to Hawaiki (where they come from). We were booked on a day trip the next day. We arrived and got a campsite in Ahipara nearby which was almost on the beach. Had a lovely walk down to the beach in the sunshine which shone for us! Then we enjoyed chips (from the chippy!) and lamb chops for tea, Mmmm!

Had an early start to be at the bus tour place for 8.45am where we met Robin our tour guide and the other 8 people on the trip. In the height of their summer season they can have three 50 seater buses a day running, so we were quite a small group! The trip is about a 250 km round trip, going up 90 mile beach, and then down the road back again, stopping off at picturesque spots and enjoying the views. 90 mile beach is actually only about 70 miles long, but still very impressive none-the-less! It is a highway, and all road rules apply, we were only in a two wheel drive bus, but the sand is not soft, so it can manage it. At one point we drove up a stream that ran down the beach, and went off road to reach a massive sand dune. The guide had tobogans for us to ride down the sand dune which looked great fun! They were tobogans to sit in, which didn't look as fun as the other group who'd got there first who were going head first on body boards, but it still looked good! The worst bit was climbing up the sand, it was really high and hard work!!! Eventually we got up to the top and I went first, it was great fun whizzing down, but the sand had been roughed up a bit from the people before, which made the ride at the end quite bumpy, and then I flew out rolled over a few times, got a face full of sand, and later even found sand in my knickers! We had a nice stop for lunch down on a little beach, and we got chatting to the other people on the trip, 3 old couples, and then a young couple like us who were travelling lots. We got to Cape Reinga, the tip of the peninsula, and went for a walk to the lighthouse at the end, and to look at where the Pacific meets the Tasman sea, you can see them crashing against each other. We the started to head back down the peninsula, this time via the road, and Robin pointed out anything interesting and explained all the crops that were growing etc. We stopped at a little place for a large ice-cream, and we remembered it had been a long while since we'd had ice-cream! It was so warm on the bus that we both had a little snooze as well, then we were back at the Kauri tree shop for Robin to wash off the bus. The native New Zealand tree grows absolutely huge, some are 1500 years old! However, it was running out as it had been over logged, so they have now started dragging out old preserved Kauri trees from swamp land, that have been perfectly preserved for 30 - 50,000 years! The shop has some beautiful stuff, including furniture, but it is very expensive! There is also a staircase hollowed out of a huge one leading up to a gallery, it is so strange being inside the tree, it is beautiful! After the bus had been washed we were dropped back at the base. We picked up the van and stayed in a campsite a closer to the main road ready for the next day's drive back south.