A Very Long Day (and equally long entry)

Admittedly, Mark and I can be fairly driven, when traveling, to see as much as we can squeeze in. After the fact, we often wonder why we didn’t slow down a little but at the time we just keep going. We’re rarely sorry we went and saw something, we are just tired. That was a nice thing about the sailing trip: we had to slow down, there was nowhere else to go!

We spent Sunday night in Paihia as previously arranged.  Monday morning the big decision was whether or not to drive to Cape Reinga, the northernmost point on the North Island. Our debate: are we doing this just to say we did it? Is it worth the extra driving? Will we find it as awesome/“spiritual” as others have? Regardless, we succumbed to the excitement and headed north. Google maps predicted 2 hours 42 minutes to go the 128 miles. The drive was relatively easy and we beat the tour buses. The day was cloudy and windy. From the parking lot, you walk down a long gravel path to the lighthouse at the end of the cape. The Maori belief is that this is the place where their spirits leave this world for the next. We didn’t find it particularly spiritual but it was fascinating watching the waves from the Tasman Sea crash into the waves from the Pacific Ocean. Looking down the coast to the great sand dunes was equally interesting. We headed back up the path as the bus tour mobs descended the path. Yeah!

An aside here. Do you know who Abel Tasman was? I didn’t until reading the signs at the cape. Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutchman!! In 1642, he commanded an expedition of discovery and is thought to be the first European to sight New Zealand (Captain Cook and other explorers didn’t arrive until more than a hundred years later.) Tasmania was later named after Tasman as were the Tasman Sea and Mt. Tasman, Abel Tasman National park and Track, etc. Fun facts to know and tell….

We drove south along the west coast road turning in to view the Te Paki sand dunes. These are huge dunes. A big activity is to rent a surfboard, climb the dunes, and surf down. Apparently, the surfers can get going pretty fast. (Two of our boat mates had done it and said it took them days to get the sand out of their clothes, shoes, hair, etc…..) We just observed while eating our picnic lunch in the car.

We still had lots of ground to cover so we turned south again and proceeded to the small town of Ahipura to get a view of the famous Ninety Mile Beach…which is actually 55 miles long. (Why the name? Wikipedia says, “Several theories have been advanced for the name, the most common stemming from the days when missionaries traveled on horse back…on average a horse could travel 30 miles in a day...the beach took three days to travel…but the missionaries did not take into account the slower pace of the horses walking in the sand, thus thinking they had traveled 90 miles when in fact they had only traveled 55.”) What do you think? Either way it is a long beach. It is only accessible on foot OR on one of the specially equipped tourist buses which at low tide run a section of the beach.

At this point our day began to unravel but we didn’t know that yet. Leaving Ahipura we saw the sign for Rawene--37 miles. We had 50 minutes to get there--no problem, we thought. We needed to catch the hourly Hokianga Ferry across the Hokianga Harbour (alternative option: drive hours out of our way to get around the river and harbour). Suffice it to say, we missed the 4 PM ferry by about 8 minutes. We also arrived with only fumes in our gas tank.

We sat in our car and had a snack and read while waiting for the ferry to come back from Rawene just across the water. Once on board, Mark asked about a gas station on the other side. As we exited the ferry, we immediately pulled into a store front with a pump. The owner locked up the store after pumping our gas. Phew! However, considering what happened, it might have been good to be stuck in Rawene overnight.

We drove on towards Omapere. The day had turned fair and we noticed a short hike over the bluff to views of the harbour and Ninety Mile Beach. We did the lovely little hike and decided to spend the night there in Omapere.  (Here we are relaxed and happy thinking we're having dinner and staying the night in Omapere.)

For the first time ever in New Zealand, we had not booked a hotel for the night. (I admit it, I had suggested we be more “relaxed and less scheduled” for once. Mark had somewhat reluctantly agreed.) Unbeknownst to us, there was a conference going on in the tiny beachside town and there were no rooms to be had anywhere!  After more time spent looking we were back on the road. It was now about 7 PM.

We headed towards Dargaville, a slightly larger town. Along the way, however, we just had to stop in the Waipoua Forest to see Tane Mahuta, “Lord of the Forest”, New Zealand’s largest known living kauri tree. It is thought to be nearly 2000 years old, is 173 ft high, and 45 ft around. One big tree! We ran the path out to see it at dusk.

We still had about 30 miles to go to Dargaville on the worst corkscrew road we had yet encountered in all of New Zealand. I drove since I would otherwise no doubt spew. Arriving in Dargaville, we still couldn’t locate any hotels. Wandering the small town in the dark about 9 PM, we finally got on the right street and found one. The owner was very accommodating and carried his own microwave into the room for us to use. We hauled a can of soup out of our food box for dinner and looked wearily at each other.