Places

It’s been a busy week travelling the Northland of New Zealand.  We were finally able to put some miles behind us.  Starting from where we left you at our campsite south of Auckland, we drove up to a pest free peninsula at Tawharanui Regional Park, staying two nights. Next we found ourselves headed up to Whangarai (pronounced Fun ga ray) where we found a gem of a campsite overlooking the east coast. The next couple of nights we stayed around the Whangarai headlands with its bright blue waters, sharp spired peaks, and thick green jungles. Finally you find us here in the Bay of Islands, where we have continued our pilgrimage north, hoping to arrive at the very northern tip of the country in the next few days.

Activities

Exploring New Zealand’s nature, on land and by sea, has been our main activity for this week (that’s probably going to be a theme…). We went snorkelling twice, the first time at Tawharanui marine reserve, and the second around the rocks at a remote beach called Peach Cove.  Most of the snorkelling we have done has been in tropical reefs, so it’s a real change to see the sealife here! There is a lot of kelp, which acts like underwater forest, sheltering the fish and hiding them from predators. There are sandy patches where you can supposedly find (and harvest!) scallops, although no success in that department so far. We saw lots of cool, stripy fish, and some really BIG guys, too. One fish at the marine reserve was about 40cm long and seemed to be following us, wondering what we were up to! He would’ve been an easy target for spearfishers but he seemed to know he was safe in a marine reserve, in fact his expression could have been construed as smug.

Hiking is back on the menu! We did a 2-hour one way hike to spend the night at a backcountry cabin run by the Department of Conservation called Peach Cove. It was a warm day and Kelly was unsurprisingly very sweaty. There was over 800 slippery, steep wooden and gravel stairs down to the beach from the ridgeline! One of the most interesting things about Northland is how tropical the vegetation is. It felt like hiking in Hong Kong, with palms and thick, impenetrable bush, almost like a jungle.

Kayaking was on our list of things to do in the Bay of Islands. We stayed at a place with kayaks for hire for $10 a person, which seemed better than the $60 or so offered at downtown stores. We say ‘seemed’, because in fact the seats were not quite functional and the paddles less so! Nevertheless, we still had a pleasant trip from where we are staying at Haruru Falls (a horseshoe-shaped waterfall on a tidal river) down to the sea. On the way we took a detour into the mangroves and saw a white-faced heron, and then a whole tree full of nesting shags (which are a type of bird that dives underwater for fish, similar to a cormorant or a gannet). We also saw some insane rope swings, although weren’t inclined to try them out as the weather was a bit so-so, not the best for swimming. We are putting our new wetsuits to great use, it’s awesome and really convenient to have them. We can’t wait to use them surfing sometime soon!

Food

We are close to mastering the small quarters of our van ‘Harley’. Everything has its spot and sometimes getting the ingredient or item you are searching for involves an intricate game mixing tetris and twister. Lucas got his hands on the barbeques at a couple of our campgrounds again this week, making a mean seafood potpourri, with fresh lemon, asparagus, onions and garlic. Kelly made some mean Portobello mushroom veggie burgers. Lucas made a soup that Kelly labelled “peasant soup” due to it having every ingredient and yet nothing going on. Lucas now knows not to make soups for Kelly.

Highlight

The highlight of our week was meeting some fellow birders at Peach Cove hut and doing some jungle kiwi tracking (read: very amateur). Birding. Yes, we are really into birds now. NZ has a lot of them – because of the whole no natural predators (the mammals here are all illegal immigrants except the bats) – so many species of birds evolved that predate on each other, or bugs and other things. We like birds so much that we put on our headtorches at a remote bush hut and went out searching for kiwis. Our knowledge was purely backed by a dorky youtube recording of a kiwi’s call, which sounds like a cross between a squeaky bike wheel and a dog getting run over. It’s not pretty. After diving into a kiwi-themed youtube hole with our hut-mates, a British couple from Leeds, we discovered that the trill-like noise we had been hearing around our picnic bench for the past 20 minutes was, in fact the female kiwi, who sounds profoundly less insane than her male counterparts. Despite our valiant efforts we were not rewarded with a kiwi sighting, as they are known to be cheekily elusive, but we did see some great stars on the beach as it was a very clear night.

Blunders

Alright, so we thought we might be able to escape the continuing saga of Lucas battling with the ocean, but alas, the silliness continues. After the end of our first snorkelling session in Tawharanui, Lucas was exiting the ocean on a relatively sandy section of beach.  He was very cold as he didn’t have a wet suit, so he was running out of the ocean.  A rogue sea urchin (called a Kina here) just happened to be lurking in the sand, waiting for the fateful moment when Lucas’ left heel came quickly down upon it.  With what I can only assume was pure, reckless hatred, the Kina viciously attacked Lucas’ poor foot, leaving 6-8 spines and their natural dark dye punctured inside his foot.  Kelly spent the better part of the afternoon attempting to pluck the lodged spines out of Lucas’ foot.  There is no word into the state of the stepped on Kina, but Lucas wishes it nothing but ill will, and hopes a reef fish is munching on its tasty insides.
Lucas is really hoping that next weeks update doesn’t have him  in the blunder category again.  Frankly it’s getting to be a real thorn in his heel.

 

Wildcard

We slowly (and in our van we DO mean slowly) cut our way across the winding countryside to the east coast where we stumbled upon a small town at the end of the road called Pataua.  There was no fuel station, no grocery store, no school, in fact not a single business in town aside from a building labelled “fisherman’s club” which seemed like it may not have had its doors open in many years.  We were sceptical that somehow a campground would be past this place, despite what an online app had told us.  We were looking for a campsite called “Treasure Island Campsite”, and as we lumbered down a short gravel road, we wondered if we would actually find this lost gem.  We came around a series of sharp corners and there it was in front of us.  A park/campground with 150 sites…. Of which not a single one was occupied.  We pulled in, and took our spot, took out our lawn chairs and were about to relax when the owner Nita, drove down on her quad bike with her large dog riding on the back.  “Follow me”, she beckoned and we climbed our way up a steep hill up onto some bluffs where she had a couple of ‘VIP’ campsites and she gave us the one at the very top. It overlooked the bay, the sharp headland peak, and the open ocean.  Frankly the best spot we’ve stayed at so far.  She was so kind and friendly, and we felt special overlooking everything below.  To get down from the hill, she had put in a zip line, and with a little too much reckless abandon we went whizzing down the hill, somewhat scraping our bottoms along the way as it was meant for children and we have been eating like we are on holiday for far too long.

We hope this read isn’t a whizz too far down the page, but thanks for joining us.  See you next week when we (hopefully) make it to the northern tip of New Zealand, and then perhaps a surf trip on the way back down.

Want to contact us? Got a response to any of this week’s adventures?
Click here to send an e-mail reply direct to Kelly and Lucas! 🙂