We took a bus tour today to Cape Reinga, on the northern tip of the North Island, and what a trip it was! We started off way too early in the morning (7:30am for Gods sake!) and stopped off at Puketi Kauri Forest to view the giant kauri trees - not the tallest trees in the world but the biggest in terms of timber (according to the tour guide). The ones we saw weren't massive but back in the day they were bigger. Here's a photo of a tree!
We then hopped back on the bus and worked our way up to Cape Reinga with our tour guide giving us snippets of information about the region and New Zealand in general - most of which I can't remember. At Cape Reinga we took a short walk to the cliff top underneath a nice little lighthouse (automated - looks a bit like Valentia) and we saw where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific ocean.
The Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean are an hour out of sync (so I'm told) and cause the meeting place to churn up, as you will see in this photo at the top:
We then hopped on the tour bus again and drove along a quicksand stream at Te Paki to see the giant (and I mean giant) sand dunes. Everyone grabbed a toboggan and began the long climb up to the top of the nearest dune and pelted down on our stomachs. You can go up to 80 miles an hour if you don't put on the brakes (i.e. dragging your feet). I decided to give it one more go and I was so knackered afterwards that that was that. It was hard work. The shutter speed in my camera is so quick that the following photo of me and Su barreling down the sand dune makes it look like we are stationary.
Remember kids, speed kills.
Anyway, covered in sand we hopped on the bus again and took a short journey to 90 Mile beach. Funny story - 90 Mile beach is actually more like 60 miles in length - the person who named it often mixed up his 9's and 6's and hence 60 became 90.
Actually I don't know why it's called 90 Mile beach but it is in fact more like 60 miles in length. You can see another rock with a hole in it but it's a different hole in a different rock to the one we saw in the last report.
We then heading homewards and stopped off at Mangonui for something they call Fush n Chups in New Zealand. Not sure exactly what it was but it seemed like some type of small marine creature battered in... ehhh.. batter and serves with thinly sliced potato sticks fried in oil. Yum! Actually not a patch on Burdocks chipper in Dublin but it did the job!
We got home to our car park after a busy day and open a nice box of wine (so much better from a box) and chatted til the early hours (around 11pm). A day of driving ahead of us as we are leaving Paihia and the Bay of Islands and off to Rotorua, roughly 500 miles away! Woohoo!
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