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So after a few days of doing nothing, bar a room switch to escape snoring and a Sunday funday of doing laundry, we woke up bright and early Monday morning to go on a tour of Cape Reinga at one of the northern most tips of New Zealand and a drive on the 90 mile beach.
So a 6am alarm has never been friendly, and breakfast that early even less so, but after those formalities were done we were waiting for our bus; it was like a longer 4 by 4 but much longer, although Jen was a bit dubious as It was near enough the oldest bus there, and looked a bit suspect next to a new and recent bus that looked like the boss!
But off we went around Paihia until we were full and set off north towards the cape, with commentary from our driver (who we sat directly behind) who himself ended most sentences with "sweet as"; that got more and more annoying over the day, give me a Stoke "duck" any day!
We had a stop off about 20 mins outside Paihia at the Puketi Kauri Forest, a forest with humongous trees (both tall and wide!) - funnily enough, the walkway that loops around the inside was built for our dearest Queen Elizabeth II, costing $1million to get done; only for her to arrive, walk 20 metres and get a photo taken and turn around and leave!
Jen won't agree but the funniest part of this was that the photo they took of her outside the entrance couldn't be used in the papers - the walkway and forest is in the Manginangina Scenic Reserve and the queen...well she covered up the latter part which meant there was quite a funny word on show...
Ok with that out of the way, on to the cape we go; what a place! This was Jens favourite place so far as it was so spiritual and peaceful and the Maori belief is that the spirits of the dead travel to Cape Reinga on their journey to the afterlife to leap off the headland and climb the roots of the 800 year old tree and descend to the underworld to return to their traditional homeland of Hawaiki, using the Te Ara Wairua, the 'Spirits' pathway'.
What's cool is that right at the top end, where the lighthouse is, the Tasmanian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean!
We only had 35 minutes or so to walk around, but with it being such a beautiful place you can see amazing things with every step you take - so many views from up higher on the entrance, lower down by the lighthouse or up the hills.
We walked down the path and could instantly see the two oceans meeting down below the rocks which was pretty cool. We walked round to the left first up a hill (always my most favourite thing..) and walked down with a breeze t'other side, down to the lighthouse.
The views from down there were great, right up close to the meetings of the oceans, and a signpost saying how many kilometres to London, Tokyo. Los Angeles and more; just amazing.
We managed to get back to the bus, huffing and puffing, just about on time - of course the trips standard Asian tourist was 5 minutes late dawdling like a goldfish out of water - and we set off towards the sand dunes for some activity, with a 20 minute lunch stop down by a beautiful beach first with plentiful seagulls!
Now sand dunes - you might think of molehill size or Mount Everest, but the one we stopped by was huge - about 200 metres high, twice as high as any others around it and of course I got over excited and decided I'd have a go at sand boarding even though I'd said no up until then; great idea....not!!!
Not only did the walk nearly kill me, the ride down had a damn good go at it! It started well and started fast..until I started turning too much and ended up going sideways, flipping over and over before having to do a ninja style flick up off the sand else I would've have got an up close and personal contact with a Romanian guy on a body board!!
Embarrassment aside, and soft sand being pretty painful, we were back on the bus through the 500 metre stream remaining to the 90 mile beach - what a place!
Although only beach and ocean stretching far, it was an amazingly beautiful site - we drove 5-6 miles down and the bus stopped to let people out...onto a beach, the tourists flooded off like fat kids who stopped at a chocolate factory!!! It's nice but it's only a beach, what a load of lemons - me and Jens stayed on the bus like a tired old couple.
Not much to tell about the day after that, we drove an hour down the beach until we exited and got through to a Maori cafe/gift shop while the bus got washed which had some different furniture in a workshop, and a staircase carved inside a tree!
A fish and chip stop in Manganui (average) was last before we went home and had a pretty good pizza from Ruffinos in Paihia before it decided to rain on us when walking home - bedtime soon (and early!) ready to head back south tomorrow.
What next you ask? A farm, milking cows, feeding animals and fields - surely this will be uneventful...right?
Peace
Dave and Jens
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