The far north

bed count: 39

Northland is cool! All those people who told us not to even bother with the North Island and to head south straight away are complete suckers. They have no idea what they are missing.

Loads to tell you so I'll try and break it up a bit.

General stuff

It's warming up here. The temperatures are in the early 20s most days and up here, at the apartments, out of the way of the sea breeze, it gets pretty toasty. Luckily there is a small outdoor pool and I am putting my new swimming costume to good use.

Call us crazy, but we even took a dip in the sea the other day. The beaches are good in Paihia, but quite busy with town traffic, so we went over to Long Beach just outside Russell, which is much quieter. There we spent a comedic 10 minutes gradually edging our way into the cool water accompanied by shrieks (from both of us), but it was fine in the end and we splashed about happily for a good while.

So, our tans are coming along nicely and Alec has been picking oranges off the tree outside our apartment. The clocks change here this weekend so we're really looking forward to light evenings for the first time in a year.

Other than that we're turning into right little Kiwis - saying things like 'tin' instead of 'ten' and walking round in flip flops or barefoot (people were doing that in the middle of winter when we first got here - crazy folk).

Ahipara

We headed further north last week for a few days, taking the road up the west coast and passing through some gorgeous countryside. The fields are full of masses of gorse in bloom at the moment (imported by the Scots to make them feel more at home - it works) and the callow lillies are still out.

We'd booked to stay at Endless Summer Youth Hostel at Ahipara on the south end of 90 Mile Beach and had high expectations based on the 95% satisfaction rating given by BBH users last year. Let me tell you, it doesn't disappoint.

Endless Summer is definitely the best hostel we have stayed in so far. It's in a beautiful setting across the road from the beach and is itself a very pretty 120 year old building. We love the kitchen (can't believe a hostel can have a kitchen so nice) and the building is full of character and very well maintained.

Plus, there were a great bunch of people there when we visited. It was a really good place to come back to after a long day out and we spent our evenings BBQing, meeting new people and teaching crazy a German English slang (you know who you are Max).

Anyhow - anyone who doesn't believe how great a hostel can be can take a look at the pics posted in the Ahipara and Shipwreck Bay set on Flickr, which includes (very) early morning and evening shots of the beach across the road too.

Trip to 90 Mile Beach and Cape Reinga

We took a tour with Harrisons Cape Runner from Kaitaia, at the south of 90 Mile Beach, to Cape Reinga. The tour guide was great - a local Maori guy who filled us in on all the local history and knew all the best places to stop, including the shop selling the best-value ice creams in the southern hemisphere just $1.50 (50p) for a huge scoop. There were only 5 people on the tour in all and we spent the day feeling very smug looking at the large groups getting off the big buses at various points.

We stopped at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom first which turned out not to be as bizarre as the name suggests. It's actually a really big shop where pretty much everything is made from swamp Kauri (a local wood that comes from really big trees). But it has really cool things in it like a huge Kauri couch costing $30,000 and a spiral staircase carved into the centre of a swamp Kauri trunk. The workmanship is amazing and we were able to watch wood turners, carvers and chainsaw carvers at work, which was all pretty interesting.

The main event, however, was the trip to Cape Reinga, which is NZ's equivalent of John O'Groats (not actually the northern-most tip of the mainland, but the bit that everyone visits anyway). Cape Reinga was on our list of places to visit when we started planning the trip, but it wasn't until we got there and felt the rush of "oh my god, we're actually here" that we remembered that.

It may only be a lighthouse on a headland to some people (see pics in the Far north day trips set on Flickr), but it was really cool to be here after all that time planning and saving. It's finally starting to sink in that we really are in the up-side-down part of the world.

Anyhow - after lunch in another gorgeous bay we went to the giant Te Paki sand dunes. I'd read about these on the leaflet for the tour and was thinking "big deal - sand dunes. I've seen sand dunes before on my school field trip to Wales". Whoa baby - not like these ones!

These are GIANT sand dunes. They're not lying. Like huge hills. I was completely and genuinely gob smacked (can you imagine that??). I mean they could film realistic desert scenes here.

We drove down this little country track with green fields and cows and little hills and these HUGE sand dunes rising up in the distance. Forget all the other cool things so far, if this was the only thing in the North Islands the trip would be worth it. That's what you're missing suckers. :) :) :)

So, after the shock of that, and the physical challenge of walking up a very steep hill of sand only to hurtle back down it on a toboggan at high speed (and in my case fall off 3/4 the way down), we got back on our bus and proceeded to drive down the middle of a sandy-bottomed stream to 90 Mile Beach. Meanwhile the driver told us he had to maintain the steady speed so he didn't get stuck in the quick sand...

And now the advantages of taking a tour rather than driving yourself become even more apparent. You see, 90 Mile Beach is actually a 'proper' highway. Yes - by that I mean it's on the road maps as a road. And it's actually as good a highway as you'll find in NZ - straight and pretty smooth with plenty of room for overtaking (a feature lacking in many other places) and killer views.

However - Alec and I were too chicken / sensible to drive our own car on the beach having read the warnings about quick sand and the fact that our car insurance probably doesn't cover us on this particular 'highway'. The tour companies actually use this as an effective marketing ploy - telling you how many cars are lost to tides / quick sand every year and using pictures of car roofs peeking out of the sand in their brochures.

Choosing to navigate the length of the beach on a much bulkier vehicle like a bus probably doesn't sound like a better option, but the guides know their stuff (including the all important tide times and routes off the beach). Plus, if we had driven ourselves we would never have been able to say that we once herded oyster catchers using a bus. Bet none of you guys can say that...

Needless to say, the drive down the beach was stunning, even if we failed to spot any wild horses. And, even if 90 Mile Beach is actually closer to 60 miles long, it's still a damned long and pretty stretch of sand.

Matai and Mangonui

After all that excitement the rest of our time in the Far North was spent relaxing and taking lots of pics (we took around 500, but only made a fraction of these public on Flickr so as to save your sanity, so don't be afraid to have a peek).

Worth noting though, was the sunny, sleepy day spent at Matai Bay - a beautiful, white sanded, crescent-shaped bay in the middle of nowhere, right next to an exact copy of itself. Also - the visit to Mangonui with its 'world famous' fish and chip shop (tasty) and many cool arty / craft shops.

All in all, it was a nice break. A really good holiday in the middle of our working holiday. And it's got us fired up to see more and make plans for when we head off from Paihia. Looks like a North Island road trip with a few WWOOFs along the way might be on the cards. Watch this space.