New Zealand, March 2018: Down the East Coast

Lipah, April 16th

To see a Google Map of this part of the trip, click here.

Once we had headed south from Algies Bay and left the Northland behind after two enjoyable weeks there, Terri and I set off on a tour of the east coast of the North Island.  We had an appointment to keep on March 12th with Terri's sister Karen in Wellington, but other than that we were fairly unconstrained in our schedule.  Since this was the part of New Zealand that Terri had grown up in, there were plenty of family, friends and mementoes of her youth for us to visit, inbetween hikes, scenic detours and birdwatching.

Bar-tailed godwits at Miranda

We passed through Auckland's sprawl with only one stop, buying homebrewing and winemaking equipment at a shop that was billed as Home Growing and Home Brewing.  The guy at the till clearly was a keen home grower and had been sampling his own wares; he was too stoned to be of much help in answering questions.  We bought what we could, then headed east towards the Firth of Thames, through pretty rural villages surrounded by horse farms.  The Firth of Thames is a major bird migration site for waders, some of whom spend the rest of the year in Alaska.  The main birdwatching spot is at Miranda, and the Department of Conservation have done sterling work in setting up bird hides and staffing the place with very knowledgeable volunteer ornithologists.  We spotted the New Zealand endemic the wrybill, the royal spoonbill, the red knot and the bar-tailed godwit.

Thousands of godwits take to the air at Miranda

The godwits are the world champions of long-distance migration; when they leave New Zealand they fly to East Asia for refuelling, then on to Alaska.  Coming back, they fly non-stop across the Pacific, covering 11,500 kilometres in 10 days, for an average speed of nearly 50 km/h.  It's an astonishing feat of endurance for a bird with a mass of only about 400 grams.  Sadly, rampant draining of wetlands for industrial development in China and South Korea is depriving them of their refuelling stop there, and godwit numbers, along with those of many other migratory waders along the East Asian Flyway, are in precipitous decline.  It was heartening to see so many birds at Miranda, and the efforts that New Zealand is undertaking on their behalf; it would be nice if South Korea and China were to put out the same effort.

Terri and her cousin Mark, keen adventure racer and cyclist

From there the grey skies started to open up on us, making the drive through the scenic Karangahake Gorge a bit less picturesque.  It's an old gold mining area, and we were en route to the town of Waihi, where gold is still mined today, to visit Terri's cousin Mark.  We stayed a couple of nights with Mark, whose father Ian was the younger brother of Terri's father Jim.  We had a fun night hearing about Mark's various adventure races, both those that he organizes and others in which he's a participant.  

The next day we headed out on bicycles to ride along with friends of his who were passing nearby as part of the Tour Aotearoa, a bicycle "brevet" (not exactly a race, but like a race) along the 3000-kilometre New Zealand Cycle Trail, a mixture of beaches, back roads, logging roads, old rail lines and single track that links Cape Reinga to Bluff (the entire length of the NZ mainland).  The Tour Aotearoa is a clever marketing event, staged every two years, sending out groups of 100 cyclists at a time from Cape Reinga.  We had breakfast with Mark's two friends at a cafe in Hikutaia, then rode 20 kilometres chatting with them about cycle touring and their experiences so far.  It was great to be back on a bicycle saddle and talking with other keen cycle tourists; Terri is certainly thinking of riding a good chunk of the trail sometime in the next couple of years.  We pedalled back through the Karangahake Gorge, which was much prettier in the sunshine.

Terri, her aunt and uncle and three cousins (and one husband)

The next day we met up with the rest of Mark's siblings along with their mother and father, all of whom live in Waihi.  It was great for me to meet them, and for Terri to get a chance to talk to them outside the context of funerals, which is sadly where they had been meeting over the past few years.  After a long, spirited conversation at a cafe, we bit them a fond farewell and headed off north towards the Coromandel Peninsula, a place dear to New Zealand hearts for its wilderness and its hippy, off-the-grid reputation.  The first port of call was the town of Whangamata, where Terri's parents had moved back in the 1990s so that her father could do more fishing in the ocean.  We found a couple of the houses that her parents had bought and renovated, took a few photos, then drove further north towards the most touristy place we had yet visited, Hot Water Beach.  For the first time in our travels, we entered into the raging torrent of overseas tourists in campers and campervans who wash over New Zealand every austral summer.  The beach has a trickle of geothermally heated water just below the surface of the sand, so if you dig a hole in the right spot, you are rewarded with your own hot spring.  The problem is that with too many people on the beach, all the right spots are taken, so you end up with lineups of hopeful bathers vulturing around, trying out abandoned holes and waiting for others to leave.  The water was pretty hot, but not very deep, as the sand constantly falls into the hole and refills it.  It was kind of fun, but not nearly as satisfying as I have had in Japan, on places like Shikine Island south of Tokyo.

Cathedral cove on the Coromandel

From there the tourist trail runs a bit further north along the rugged coast to Cathedral Cove, or rather to its parking lot, inconveniently located several kilometres from the trailhead, presumably as a means of forcing people onto overpriced shuttle buses.  We skipped the buses and walked briskly, racing the 6:30 closing time for the parking lot, out over the headlands to the cove.  It was definitely photogenic, but the grey skies robbed the rock faces of their colours.  We walked back along the beach trail into town, beating the deadline by half an hour, and then drove off to figure out where to spend the night.  We ended up opting for a DoC campsite on the other shore of the peninsula at the foot of the hike to the Pinnacles.  After a stop for fish and chips, we drove over a sinuous mountain road through dense fog, a white-knuckle experience amplified by passing the site of a spectacular multi-car accident.  When we finally arrived at the campsite, we found signs announcing that the Pinnacles track was closed due to storm damage, and our campsite looked very wet and unappealing in the continuing rain.  We ended up bedding down on our air mattresses under the shelter of the roof of the closed information centre.  It was a cozy, dry place, but no sooner had we fallen asleep than a carful of drunks arrived, car stereo blaring and loud voices slurring imprecations.  We stayed out of sight, hopeful that it wasn't a modern-day incarnation of Jake the Muss and his friends from Once Were Warriors, and they drove off soon afterwards.

New Zealand dotterel on the shore at Matarangi 

It was still raining the next morning, so we packed up the car and headed into the regional centre of Thames for breakfast and then further up the west coast of the peninsula.  The road was under heavy reconstruction after storm damage from a January cyclone, but the scenery was very pretty.  We ended up near the northern end of the peninsula in Coromandel Town, a hippy centre set in the midst of postcard-perfect sheep farms, then headed south along the east coast of the peninsula in search of a rare endemic bird species, the New Zealand dotterel.  In the small, pretty town of Matarangi we parked and walked along the wild, deserted, wave-tossed beach for a long way Terri spotted a dotterel in the distance.  We stood and watched through binoculars as it slowly worked its way along the sand, then realized that there was another one further back, and then two fluffy chicks.  It was heartening to see a fairly endangered bird fighting for survival against the odds and producing offspring.  The first dotterel eventually approached close enough to snap a few photos, and we strolled back along the sand pleased with our detour.

The view from the top of Mount Maunganui

From there we put our foot down and drove south to the once-small town of Omokoroa, part of the booming suburban sprawl of the Bay of Plenty, centred around Tauranga.  Another of Terri's father's siblings, her Auntie Lois, lived there in a farmhouse with her husband Phil.  On three sides, their hilltop farmland is now surrounded by suburbs, warehouses and construction sites, but they still have a magical view out over the water.  We arrived to find Phil chasing down sheep.  Their daughter Phillipa lives right next door with her Canadian husband John and their three children, two of them very keen horsewomen.  We would make Auntie Lois' welcoming home our base over the next few days of social visits, starting with a delicious stew that first night.

Uncle Phil, Terri and Auntie Lois

Terri and her younger brother Trevor

March the 3rd found us busy socializing.  First up was Terri's younger brother Trevor, whom we met for a coffee and a catch-up.  Then a long chat with Odette, Terri's friend from her Japan days.  We got in some exercise with a brisk walk up Mount Maunganui, a peak that looms over Tauranga Harbour, before one more social call on a friend from Terri's military days, Mandy, and her husband Len, recently back from a couple of years of cycling based at the foot of the legendary Mont Ventoux in Bedoin.  The day finished with an evening of socializing with Philippa and John and their children, featuring some of the daughters' wonderful wildlife and horse-themed paintings and even me on the piano.

John, Philippa, their three children and Terri

Playing with my macro lens to look at fungi

The following day we fled from social engagements and went for a long trek in the hills inland from the coast.  We tramped for four and a half hours through lovely native bush on the Lindemann Road track.  It felt good to have a long walk after lots of sitting in cars and on sofas, and we even finally had brilliant sunshine to do it in.  We went through some family history and old photographs that evening with Aunt Lois and Uncle Phil, hearing stories of Terri's father and the other siblings, and of the colourful founder of Omokoroa, a retired minister of independent means from Tasmania who was a direct ancestor of Uncle Phil.

Rob Veale and I doing some product placement for their place

March 5th found us back at the foot of Mount Maunganui, catching up with Jo and Rob Veale, friends of Terri whom we had last seen in Livingstone, Zambia a year and a half ago when they were volunteering at Terri's pre-school and elementary school project, the Olive Tree Learning Centre.  They have settled back into New Zealand life, with Jo running a big backpacker's hostel close to the beach in Mount Maunganui.  We met her and Rob there, and escaped the hustle and bustle of the hostel to grab a quick coffee across the street with Jo.  It was strange to see familiar people in completely new surroundings.  Mount Maunganui is very gentrified and affluent, with soaring property prices and lots of new residents and foreign tourists drawn to its surf beaches, while just inland is the centre of NZ's booming kiwi fruit and avocado industry.  It's a very pretty place, but rather too bustling and glitzy for our tastes.

Pretty Lake Okataina, near Rotorua

Steven, Toni and Terri at a joyful reunion in Rotorua

From there we drove inland an hour to Rotorua, famous for its thermal hot springs.  I had been to them before, as had Terri, so we opted instead for a hike around gorgeous Lake Okataina, where we had the trail entirely to ourselves under sunny skies.  The forest was impressive native bush, but we had little luck spotting endemic bird species; there must not have been enough effort put into trapping the local possums and stoats.  Afterwards we drove to the house of yet another member of Terri's extended and welcoming family, her cousin Steven and his wife Toni.  We ate a lavish barbecue and drank lots (too much, perhaps) fine Central Otago pinot noir wine while catching up on more family stories and the rally car driving exploits of their son Sloan, about to head to Finland to pursue his passion.

Rotorua redwoods

Redwood bark, Rotorua

We set off slightly bleary-eyed the next morning, but a hike through the redwood forest of Rotorua cleared our heads and lifted our spirits.  They are, of course, an exotic tree, introduced from California, but their majestic size made for an air of solemn sanctity, broken only by a party of remarkably loud Korean tourists whom we quickly left behind.  From there it was a long day of driving in the direction of Gisborne, Terri's childhood hometown.  We drove through the long and very pretty Waioueke Gorge, and when we found a perfectly idyllic DoC campsite at Mangonuku, well off the road and beside a rushing river, we decided to call it quits early and treat ourselves to a rather brisk swim and a lazy late afternoon of reading and juggling.

March 7th saw us get up and have a quick hike, interrupted by heavy storm damage to the trail, then complete the journey to Gisborne, where we undertook a trip down memory lane.  Terri spent the first 17 years of her life in that city, and we visited three of the four houses where she lived over that period (the fourth was demolished and rebuilt some years ago).  It had been almost thirty years since Terri's last visit, and although very little had changed, it was still hard to find some of the houses.  Gisborne is a bit like a Kiwi version of my hometown, Thunder Bay:  a bit isolated and out of the way, very blue-collar, and not participating in the population growth and housing boom engulfing much of the rest of the country.  We met up with Terri's next door neighbours for the first 10 years of her life, and caught up with the intervening decades that afternoon.  Vicky, the older sister, and her husband have a wonderful older hilltop house surrounded by aviaries of exotic birds, and it was an atmospheric place to stay.

The house in Gisborne where Terri spent her first decade

Terri reunited with her childhood next-door neighbours

Vicky's hilltop house in Gisborne

Pouawa Beach

The next day we went for a drive along the beaches stretching north of town, getting as far as Tolaga Bay.  We parked the car and had a very pleasant ramble over the headlands and into Cook's Cove, a sheltered inlet where Captain James Cook visited on the first British exploration of New Zealand.  We drove back to Gisborne and had a wonderful evening of fine food, wondrous wine and convivial conversation with Helen and her partner at his beach house.  We were glad to be sleeping indoors that night, as an apocalyptic thunderstorm hammered Gisborne overnight.

Cooks Cove, near Tolaga Bay

That rain played havoc with our onward travels the next day, and we only made it as far as Wairoa, after a long soak in the hot springs at Morere and a quick poke around the wind-lashed Mahia Peninsula en route.  The rain was torrential and made for alarming driving, and it felt good to relax and sleep in an AirBnB room instead of pushing on.

March 10th dawned grey but not actually raining, and we spent much of the day driving south towards the town of Masterton, via a country fair just outside the city of Napier.  The skies cleared gradually, and we entered Masterton under brilliant sunshine.  We stayed with another old friend of Terri's from university days, Vivienne, and had a wonderful evening of food, conversation and (for the benefit of Vivienne's high school son Liam) magic tricks and math puzzles.

Looking out at Kapiti Island from the coastal trail

March 11th found us hiking along a spectacular coastal walkway along the Kapiti Coast, just north of Wellington.  It's a fairly new track and up to the high standards we had come to expect, with hundreds of stairs up the steeper sections and a few swaying suspension bridges.  We were high up above the traffic of the main north-south highway, and had sweeping views out to sea to Kapiti Island, and south to the shores of the South Island.  It was a really beautiful place to get in a little exercise.  We camped that night in a Wellington Regional Park, Battle Hill, where we were one of only 4 camping groups in a huge campsite.  I was impressed throughout our stay with the general quality of DoC and regional park campsites:  well situated, with good, clean facilities and reasonable prices.

A bridge on the Kapiti Coast Trail

The view from Battle Hill

The next morning we got up, packed up and went for a hike to the top of Battle Hill, a key site in the British conquest of New Zealand.  The British defeat of the Maori chief Te Rangihaeata opened the Wellington area to British conquest and settlement.  The view from the top, over a sheep farm, pine plantations and a distant motorway construction site, emphasize how much the landscape has changed since 1846 under British settlement.  We drove out towards Upper Hutt with a stop in Porirua for a stroll along a boardwalk through a bird-filled marsh.  

The Norris clan welcomes Aunt Terri and a Canadian interloper 

Upper Hutt is where Terri's sister Karen and her husband Joshua live, along with three of their five adult children.  A fourth, Luke, was visiting from his home in Germany, and was leaving the next day, so we had timed our arrival so that I could meet four of Terri's five nieces and nephews in one place.  (The fifth lives on the South Island.)  It was great to meet the Norris clan after having heard so much about them over the years.  

A charismatic tui with his stylish ruff

Back from the brink:  a takahe at Zealandia

We visited two of the best sights in Wellington during our stay in Upper Hutt. We visited Zealandia, another "mainland island" predator-free sanctuary on a valley just above the central business district of Wellington.  It's been fenced off, and possums, stoats and rats have been exterminated from the entire valley.  As a result, it's a vision of what much of New Zealand could look and sound like if the ambitious Predator-Free 2050 plan comes to fruition.  We loved Zealandia, and spotted many of the native bird species that we had been reading about in our bird guide.  My favourite was the takahe, a bird regarded as extinct from 1898 until their rediscovery in 1948 in the remote mountains of the southwest South Island.  They are still extremely rare, with a population of about 300.  They have been introduced to various predator-free offshore islands and mainland reserves, and Zealandia has four of them.  They are massive, chunky birds with heavy beaks and powerful legs, and it brought a lump to my throat to see a creature that so very nearly went the way of the dodo.  

A kaka at Zealandia

A North Island saddleback at Zealandia

Takahe were only one of the star attractions, though.  We also saw the north island saddleback, the kaka (an endemic parrot, very comical in its antics) and the kakariki, a small parakeet which we saw for a few fleeting seconds.  On our way out, we also saw some tuatara, a strange lizard-like creature that seems to be a holdover from the age of the dinosaurs.  We walked out of Zealandia mightily impressed and heartened by the conservation efforts we had seen there, as well as in so many other spots in the country.  If only other countries would do as much, the natural world would be a lot better off.

A kakariki (red-crowned parakeet) at Zealandia

The prehistoric tuatara at Zealandia

The following day we went into downtown Wellington again, this time with Karen and Joshua, to visit the wonderful National Museum and to stroll around the harbour area.  The museum was outstanding, with a moving exhibit on the New Zealand experience at Gallipoli, as well as a superb natural history section.  There was even the only colossal squid specimen on display anywhere in the world.  

Joshua, Karen and Terri in stylish Wellington Harbour

Inbetween these touristy things, we had lots of chances for Terri to catch up with her sister, and for me to talk to various members of the family.  It was a wonderful few days, but eventually, on March 15th, we had to bid a reluctant farewell to the Norrises and start driving north for the final leg of our trip, up the west side of the North Island.  The east coast had been great fun, with the biggest highlight being all the hospitality offered us by Terri's huge cast of family and friends all along our route.

Sunset over Upper Hutt

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