Far North - Cape Reinga

Further to Jacquie's post below I'll just have a quick update on the day trip I took up the very Northern part of NZ - Cape Reinga. Started with a 7.15am pickup (not nice) then a drive up to Puketi Kauri Forest and a quick ramble amongst the 2,000 year old trees in this nature reserve. The Kauri trees are the 2nd largest tree in the world (largest being the Californian redwood) and once covered all of NZ, but due to the European settlers in the mid 1800's they now only cover some 3% of NZ compared with the 95% coverage they used to have a real shame as these giant trees are something special.


To get to the Cape you actually have to drive along a beach known as the 90 mile beach (it's not actually 90 miles long, it's only 64 miles but who cares). On our way we encountered a 1980 Mercedes Benz that some old codger loved (it only had 44,000 miles on the clock), sadly the old duffer (about 4 weeks ago) decided to take his beloved car for a spin on the beach and got the tides wrong and before he knew it the sea came in and his car got stuck in the sand. See below for what happened.


The tour guide was saying that in about another 4 weeks the car will be completely swallowed up by the sand and the old fella wasn't insured to be driving on a beach - ouch. After the drive along 90 mile beach we came to the giant sand dunes at the end of the beach and it was here that I got a chance to try some sand boarding, basically you climb a huge sand dune (takes about 10 mins to climb) and then get a small body board, lie on it and then hurtle yourself down the sand dune, swallowing a mountain of sand as you go. It was bloody good fun, so much so that I had to do it 4 times, although my legs were killing me by the end from the climb. Trust me it aint easy to climb a sand dune again and again.



I finally got to Cape Reinga and did the usual photo thing, sadly the weather was a little cloudy and splashy with rainy showers but you'll see from the photos that it is a special place to visit. The Maoris hold Cape Reinga in the highest regard as they believe it is the most sacred place in NZ, the belief is that when you die your soul travels through the country up to Cape Reinga and then departs NZ into the afterlife. Cape Reinga is also the point in which the Tasman Sea (on the left) meets the Pacific Ocean (on the right) causing the large waves you can just about see in the picture below. Very cool.



After the cape we headed back towards Paihia via the Ancient Kauri Kingdom which is a company that searh the local swamps and bogs for Kauri logs (you can't get any Kauri timber anywhere else as they are preserved by the government) which they then turn into all manner of furntiure, household items etc. Each of the pieces of wood they find are carbon dated to be about 45,000 - 50,000 years old. Naturally I got suckered and bought an incense burner for about NZ$20 I was tempted to go for a 3 seater sofa but at NZ$40,000 I felt it was just to cheap and tacky ;-). All in all a most excellent day, pity about the weather but hey still one of those life experiences that you can't miss out on.