We got up relatively early the next day and got ready. We were being picked up at 7:30am by the Dune Rider, a 4WD coach that was going to take us up to Cape Reinga and along 90 mile beach with a lot of other interesting stops along the way.

Our first stop was at Mangonui where we were able to pick up a coffee. I desperately needed a coffee as I had taken a motion sickness tablet for the bus and couldn’t stop falling asleep. Unfortunately, I’ve now run out of my trusty British tablets so have had to try some others, which are making me pretty drowsy. Mangonui is a really pretty town right on the coast. We would be returning here later for fish and chips.

We kept traveling North and ended up at an old Gumdiggers park. Kauri trees are some of the largest trees in the world, growing up to 50m tall, with trunk girths of up to 16m and living for over 2000 years. Kauri gum is the fossilised resin or sap of the Kauri tree. At the Gumdiggers park we saw the remains of the work that used to happen here (shelters, tools and the holes where they have excavated the Kauri gum). We also saw a huge and very ancient Kauri tree which was believed to have been blown over in bad weather and then preserved in a swamp.

We got back in the coach and headed up to our lunch stop. We had a pretty basic lunch at a cafe on the way (meat and rice salad) and then headed up to Cape Reinga. At Cape Reinga 2 oceans collide, the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It was so cool to see the different currents and waves hitting each other creating all of these beautiful patterns on the surface of the water. At the northernmost tip of the cape there is a pohutukawa tree, believed to be around 800 years old. Cape Reinga is a very sacred place to the Maori people as they believe that the spirits of their deceased leap from this tree into the ocean to return to their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki. As we approached the Cape, our bus driver started to chant in Maori. He told us that he had lost a few family members recently and this place is the most appropriate to say goodbye. Cape Reinga isn’t quite the northern most point of New Zealand, but North Cape (which is) is inaccessible as it’s a scientific reserve, so it’s as far North as you can go. We walked around the lighthouse and went up to a vantage point to get some good views back across the Cape. The whole area had a really magical and sacred feel to it. Beautiful.

We got back in the bus and started our journey back south. Our first stop was to Te Paki Sand Dunes where we were going to spend some time sandboarding. Neither of us had sandboarded before so we were pretty excited to have a good. I couldn’t believe how steep the dune was that we were going to be riding down, but we both had a good and really enjoyed it. Simon even moved up to the higher dune, but I didn’t want to as you would have to go through water at the end and I was already pretty cold. I stuck with my other dune. We only got videos of this, but I will try and put some videos onto facebook soon.

After leaving the Te Paki Sand Dunes we drove onto 90 mile beach. 90 mile beach was named by Captain James Cook (this name keeps cropping up doesn’t it) on his circumnavigation of New Zealand in 1769. He had a pretty useless device for measuring and measured the distance of the beach in nautical miles, coming to the number 90. It has been since measured at 55 miles, so quite far off the original distance, but the name has stuck. We drove along the beach for about an hour, only getting stuck by the tide once. The driver did some clever timing and we got through no problem. The whole area is really just so beautiful and it reminded us of our time on K’Gari in Australia, which is never going to be a bad memory.

We had to drop off some people at a shop that specialised in Kauri products. We were told to go straight to the middle of the store as there is a very impressive staircase carved our of one piece of Kauri wood. This piece being 50 tonnes in since. The staircase was stunning and it felt like an honour to be able to walk up the stairs. The original piece that was discovered was actually 110 tonnes, but that was used to make smaller products.

Our last stop of the day was fish and chips in Mangonui. We both enjoyed the Hoki and chips as here in New Zealand they have so many quotas and laws in place to product their marine life that I didn’t feel bad at all eating it and it was super tasty!! Our whole day had been amazing and completely worth what we had paid for the whole trip. To celebrate such a good day, we drove into town, bought some icecreams from the supermarket and sat in the car over looking Paihia and the Bay of Islands.

The next day we were starting the long drive back down Northlands, passed Auckland and over to Coromandel where we would be spending 24 hours. Unfortunately, we stopped too many times to look at things and explore that we didn’t travel as far as we wanted to during the day. We’ve learnt that most holiday parks, where we’ve been parking the car, need you to check in by 8pm and by 7pm we were hardly past Auckland. We quickly readjusted our plan as we had nothing booked and went and stayed in Orere for a night.

Here are some of the spots we enjoyed on our drive through Northlands:

Paihia beachfront

Kawakawa to look at the railway and the famous toilets

Whangarei falls

A.H Reed Kauri Park

Langs Beach

Off to Coromandel next to enjoy Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. Wooo!!!