New Zealand, Feb. 2018: The Northland Loop

Lipah Beach, Bali, April 14^th

I have just gotten back from 7 weeks on the North Island of New Zealand and it seems as good an excuse as any to finally restart my travel blog, which has been inactive for most of the past year.  There will be more blog posts to come, on the New Zealand trip, other travels over the past year, and upcoming plans.  I haven’t been completely inactive on the writing front; I’ve just been diverting my scribbling energies into writing a book based on my Silk Road cycle ride, and haven’t been doing enough new travels to divert me from that task.

I've created a Google Map of this section of the trip that you might want to open in another browser tab by clicking here.

One of the Muriwai gannets in flight

I set off from Bali on February 13^th to join Terri, who had set off a week earlier than me to catch up with her family.  It had been 26 years since my only previous trip to the country, and that had concentrated mainly on the South Island.  This time Terri and I decided to restrict ourselves to the North Island, both to see the attractions of this part of the country in greater detail, and to visit members of Terri’s large family and her sprawling network of friends.  We rented a small car, filled it with camping gear and set off from Auckland airport in high spirits.

We started off with a night in Auckland, visiting Terri’s cousin Jocelyn and her husband Bob.  We had a wonderful dinner and a quick spin around the bays around their house after I spent a few hours catching up on the sleep I hadn’t had on the flight over.  

A view of the wild west coast beaches of Muriwai

The next day we headed through Auckland and out west, across the Waitakere mountains to the wild black sand beaches of the West Coast.  We started with a visit to the clifftop colony of Australasian gannets at the small town of Muriwai.  I loved the energy of the pounding surf against the steep rock ramparts and the swirling aerobatics of the birds, which reminded me of birdwatching in the Falkland Islands back in 2015.  Then we drove north to the small town of Piha and spent a few hours hiking north on a good trail through the coastal bush to deserted beaches before heading back to the car.  It was my first time to really pay attention to New Zealand’s birdlife, and as I leafed through the pages of our newly-purchased bird guide, I realized that in comparison to most other countries, New Zealand has a very restricted number of bird species, and the most commonly seen are species from Europe or Australia such as sparrows, mynas, starlings and blackbirds that were deliberately introduced to the country by early European settlers.  These introduced bird species, and even more the land mammals such as stoats, rats, mice, hedgehogs, possums, cats, goats and deer that the settlers released into the wild, have had a catastrophic effect on the NZ ecosystem, driving many endemic bird species to the brink of extinction or over it. 

The view back down to Piha

The deserted beaches south of Karekare

We spent the night camped in a Department of Conservation (DoC) campsite full of large kereru pigeons, an endemic species.  We awoke to find the tent fly dripping with condensation from the heavy dew that we experienced every time we camped.  We spent the day on an even prettier hike, this time south of the village of Karekare, under steep volcanic cliffs and through extensive sand dunes, then through a fern-filled marshland on a new boardwalk and up onto a forested ridge providing spectacular views of the wild beaches.  The dunes were full of small ponds full of waterfowl, and the path was in wonderful condition, a contrast to Terri’s memories of muddy DoC trails from her youth.  We came back to the car smiling from 4 hours enjoyably spent, then drove north towards the dairy farm that Terri’s daughter Selena and her husband Michael run near the town of Wellsford.  We ended up camping in a free campsite nearby on the edge of a big inlet.

Terri and 4 of her 5 GKs

We spent the next day with Selena, Michael and their five young children, getting a tour of the farm and feasting on waffles cooked up by the oldest children.  In the late afternoon we said our goodbyes and drove off to our first AirBnB of the trip, a room in a house near the Dome Mountains owned by a Russian couple.  The setting was very peaceful and rural and we had a fun walk around the surrounding countryside before cooking up dinner.

The next day we had a double-header of pretty hikes.  We started out with a climb up to the summit of the Dome, a couple of hundred metres above the road, through a well-signposted forest that taught me the names of a number of the characteristic New Zealand native trees.  We saw our first tui of the trip jumping around in the forest canopy while emitting an impressive array of squawks, squeaks and parrot-like vocalizations.  We were to find that the unmistakeable voice of the tui is one of the most distinctive sounds of any NZ bushwalk.  From the top of the hike we had a clear view down over the main road and across the peaks of the Northland region, and were excited to realize that we were walking along a stretch of the Te Araraoa, the 3000-kilometre-long hiking trail that runs the entire length of New Zealand; we would encounter it several more times in the course of our travels.

Looking down onto the beach at Mangawhai Heads

Terri on the Mangawhai Heads trail

We had lunch, then drove north and east for our second walk of the day, the spectacular cliff-top trail at Mangawhai Heads.  It was one of the scenic highlights of the entire trip, a new walkway that clings atop precipitous cliffs over the east coast beach at Mangawhai before dropping down onto the beach for a scramble across the rocks onto the main beach of Mangawhai.  It may have been the single most impressive coastal panorama of our 7 weeks, and we both fell in love with the laid-back feel of the small town of Mangawhai.  We came back to the car and raced off north, past other pretty beach towns, to the city of Whangarei where we stayed with my old friend Eileen and her family on a wonderful sprawling property just outside town, had a big barbecue and soaked in their Jacuzzi staring up at the southern stars late into the night.

Reunited half a lifetime later with Eileen

Looking down from Bream Heads

We went off the next day for another hike, this time at Bream Heads, an hour east of the city.  It was a much higher, steeper and muddier track than at Mangawhai, but sweeping views provided ample reward for the additional effort required.  We retreated to Whangarei and another night at Eileen’s.  She and I hadn’t seen each other for 22 years, so there was a lot of catching up to do.

Terri and her niece Amy

Team Hundertwasser in Whangarei

The funky public toilets of Kawakawa

From there we were headed north, as far north as you can get in New Zealand without needing a boat, to Cape Reinga.  On the way out of town we stopped in to see the new downtown of Whangarei, neatly gentrified with cafes and a big sailing harbour, where a proposed museum for the artist and architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser is about to be built, after a quarter century of stops, starts and arguments.  Eileen has been involved over the last few years in these efforts.  We also caught up with Terri’s niece Amy, recently moved to Whangarei.  The drive north was a long one, through intermittent heavy rain from a passing cyclone, Gita, which meant that the Bay of Islands, a famous scenic highlight, ended up being scratched from our itinerary.  One place that we did visit were the quirky Hundertwasser Public Toilets in Kawakawa, surely the most beautiful public toilets in the world.  We ended up stopping for the night at another AirBnB run by an energetic Filipina woman on a dairy farm an hour’s drive south of the Cape, where we repacked for a two-day hike, leaving behind some valuables that Terri was concerned about having in our car overnight.

Terri with the Cape Reinga lighthouse behind

Me looking down on Te Warahi Beach

Our overnight trek south from Cape Reinga ended up being one of our favourite parts of the entire New Zealand trip.  We drove north, leaving our car at a little campground and catching a very expensive lift to the end of the road.  The cyclone had passed and the weather was sunny and clear.  The views were incredible, over an ocean boiling with massive swells that were crashing into high cliffs.  We shouldered our packs and set off from the Cape Reinga lighthouse, headed south along the first section of the Te Araroa trail.  The trail alternated between clifftop and beach sections, and the first beach section, dropping onto Te Warahi Beach, featured a rather dicey descent where a rapidly rising tide almost swept Terri away.  Once we were safely onto the sand, the walk along the wild, windswept dunes was exhilarating, and we were lucky to spot a blue penguin, the smallest penguin species in the world, standing on the beach, looking so bedraggled and bemused that we wondered if he was lost or disoriented.  A couple more beaches along, we found our DoC campground, the Twilight campsite, situated atop another bluff with breathtaking views over the pounding ocean.  It has recently been upgraded, with new toilets, a cooking shelter and a solar-powered water pump, and we had the place entirely to ourselves.  Grilling steaks and sipping a lovely NZ merlot, we spent a memorable evening.  Terri channeled her inner muse to come up with a short poem about the penguin:

Poor little pengy washed ashore

A more forlorn thing I never saw

Battered by Gita's cyclone roar

Stranded alone forever more.

Looking back north to Cape Maria van Dieman

Sunset over Twilight Beach

A New Zealand pipit seen near Twilight Beach

Our first view of Ninety Mile Beach

The next day we hiked further south, over more headlands and then down onto Ninety Mile Beach (it should really be called 85 Kilometre Beach; there’s a bit of hyperbole in the name), a huge length of undeveloped sand that ran south to the horizon.  We marched along it for a couple of hours, past hundreds of gulls and oystercatchers, before turning inland along the Te Paki stream.  We had to walk up the riverbed, often through the shallow stream, flanked by huge sand dunes.  Eventually we came to a roadhead where we stuck out our thumbs and got a lift back to our car with a young South Korean woman who was on a working holiday visa, a very popular way to see New Zealand.  We packed up the car and drove south, stopping to explore the Karikari Peninsula which Terri had heard good things about.  We eventually camped in another DoC campsite on the peninsula, an idyllic spot next to yet another beautiful beach.

Pied stilts on Ninety Mile Beach

To you it's a river, to the DoC it's a hiking trail.  Te Paki Stream

The dunes across the inlet from Opononi

From there we continued south, past the Bay of Islands, where I got third time lucky on the weather.  Despite its fame as a beauty spot, neither Terri nor I were very impressed with the place, as it’s awash in overseas tourists and very overdeveloped compared to the beautiful places we had seen further north.  Having ticked that box, we drove south along the west coast, past Maori villages, wilderness, the spectacular beach town of Opononi and eventually the kauri forests.  We stopped at Tane Mahuta, the largest surviving kauri tree, for photos.  Kauri are an iconic species of the New Zealand native bush, but between rampant logging in the 1800s and 1900s and an outbreak of a fungal disease, kauri dieback, the future of these forest giants looks a bit grim.  We camped for the night in Trounson Kauri Forest, an example of a “mainland island” pest-free wildlife sanctuary.  We spotted a rare native bird species (the stitchbird) and heard brown kiwis calling at night, but we had no luck spotting them on a nocturnal ramble through the woods. 

Mighty Tane Mahuta

Some of the big kauris in Trounson

Just before we camped, with the last scrap of phone signal (always an issue in rural New Zealand), I sent off an e-mail to Quality Schools International, a chain of international schools, who had offered me a teaching job for next academic year in Tbilisi, Georgia.  I enjoyed each of the three trips I have undertaken to Georgia over the years, in 2009, 2011 and 2015, and I decided to accept their offer.  I am looking forward to exploring the Caucasus mountains in greater detail, as well as perfecting my Russian language skills and making a start on Georgian.

Patterns in tree bark, Trounson

We awoke on February 24^th to a loud chorus of birdsong emanating from the forest, always a good indication that the efforts to trap and poison the plagues of rats, possums and stoats have yielded good results at Trounson.  We had another walk through the forest in daylight:  it was an enchanting, mystical place dripping with moisture, ferns, moss, fungi and lianas.  We heard kiwis again, and spotted a couple of baby birds hidden inside a decaying tree trunk.  The rest of the day was devoted to driving south through dairy farming country, via a quick social visit with Selena, Michael and their family in Warkworth. 

The beach at Tawharanui

In search of a place to camp for the night, we blundered into another great conservation spot on the Tawharanui Peninsula.  The campground was full, but we took a couple of hours to wander through the replanted native bush in search of rare birds, and were rewarded with encounters with both the pateke duck (the brown teal) and the North Island robin.  The entire peninsula has been fenced off (with the fence extending deep underground) and the introduced pest species have been removed.  This provides a model for the long-term goal of eliminating these species entirely from the entire country by 2050, an objective recently announced by the government.  We took our leave regretfully and ended up camped cheek by jowl with hundreds of other campers in a grim, expensive holiday park in the village of Sandspit.

The kotare, or sacred kingfisher, seen at Tawharanui

The North Island robin, Tawharanui

Sandspit rock formations

Sandspit redeemed itself partially the next morning when we wandered along its beach and found beautiful sandstone formations.  We didn’t linger long, though, as we had an appointment to keep with Terri’s long-time friends Gavin and Michelle.  They live in Algies Bay, just south of Sandspit, and are keen outdoors folks.  One of their favourite pastimes is sea kayaking, and they happened to have a spare tandem kayak for Terri and me.  We loaded up the kayaks and set off after lunch for a brisk 2-hour paddle out to Motuora Island, another predator-free offshore refuge.  It was perfect weather with very little breeze or swell, and we had a wonderful crossing, even spotting 4 more blue penguins swimming in the bay.  We could see all to way to the North Shore of Auckland in one direction and out to Great Barrier Island in the other, a huge marine playground.

Loading up the kayaks in Algies Bay

When we got to the island, we were amazed to find that we were going to have it entirely to ourselves overnight, as the few daytrippers loaded up their boats and headed off in the late afternoon.  We went for an exploratory walk, then settled in for a delicious meal of grilled steaks and couscous.  Once the sun had set, we headed out again for a night walk.  As had been the case in Trounson, we could hear kiwis calling in the darkness, but both Gavin and Michelle said that they had never been lucky enough to see one in the wild.  Fortune was smiling on us, however.  We spotted a couple of moreporks, a delightfully named native owl that are more frequently heard than seen.  We turned back towards the campsite, having given up on kiwis, when suddenly there was a crashing in the bushes and a brown kiwi came tearing out onto the path.  He took one look at us and our lights, turned tail and was safely back in the undergrowth within a few seconds, but it was long enough to get a good look at him.  We were elated as we trooped back to our tents.

Fearless adventurers about to embark

The paddle back to the mainland the next day was a bit harder, as a brisk breeze had sprung up overnight, kicking up a noticeable swell.  We took a different route back, ending up in an estuary in which a tall ship, the Spirit of New Zealand (used for school groups) was moored.  We paddled right underneath her, feeling dwarfed in our kayaks.  The trip finished with a shuttle of kayaks back to Algies Bay and a great meal with Gavin, Michelle and their newly-arrived niece and nephew-in-law from Australia.  I really enjoyed sea kayaking, as it’s something I’ve never really done, at least not overnight.  It’s a different way of seeing the world, and allows access to very different places than you can get to by hiking or cycling while still getting lots of exercise.

Overall, our 13 days in the area north of Auckland were a major highlight of our New Zealand experience, jam-packed with activities, spectacular scenery and memorable wildlife encounters.  It was almost sad to head south on February 27^th, passing through Auckland on our way down the east coast of the North Island, which will be the subject of the next blog post.  I hope you enjoyed reading about our trip, dear readers.  You might also want to cast a quick eye over a Google Map of our trip, found here.

Terri and I in paddling action