2/24–Nothing day in Kailua

And by nothing, I mean we’ve done nothing!  We made our morning walk and coffee at the market.  They’ve run out of Splenda, of all things, so we don’t dawdle on the patio as we normally do, but head home so I can drink my coffee.

Then we just sort of spend the day reading, writing, blogging and generally doing nothing.  It rained on and off all afternoon, so being inside was worthwhile. 

We research movies and times for Sunday and decide on “Get Out” at the Dole Cannery theatre.  This way we have something to do after we check out at 10:30am and before our 6pm flight.  Plus, the theater is right next to Costco where we plan to go to gas up the car and buy our macadamia nuts to bring home.

At 4:30 we head back up to Whole Foods for Happy Hour. Tonight, along with the great wine and beer, we try the Cauliflower nachos as our app.  Wow – what a great idea.  And they are so good. Lightly breaded fried cauliflower with pico di gallo and lime aioli.  Wish our Whole Foods would add that, we might even go there to eat.  LOL.

Came back home and eventually grilled our steaks and corn and spent the rest of the evening just hanging out.

2/23–Kailua Market night

We were up and out at a normal time today, so we made our traditional trek to the park and then the market for coffee.  The locals we remembered from our other trips are still there at the first table on the patio.  Nice to know some things never change.

We don’t do much for the rest of the day. Just sort of hang out, read and relax. Tonight though is market night, so we will be going up to the town center to peruse the trucks, food, and veggie vendors.  First though we go to Lanikai Brewing, a local brewery we had no idea existed.  I don’t know how we found it, I think I stumbled across it on the web somehow. But we decide to try them out.  We park in the Target lot – because we’ve done reconnaissance and there is no parking at the brewery.  Plus this puts us right in the middle of the brewery and the market. So it works.

At the brewery, it is only a tasting room.  And a very small one at that.  It is packed with people – meaning 6 people – it’s that small.  We get tasters of Pillbox Porter (nice) and Okole Maluna, a chocolate, coffee, coconut stout (also nice). As we are standing there tasting, more people come in and we hear the Lanikai guys tell them that beers are $1 and $2 to taste? But they didn’t charge us, so, we’re not sure what the deal is.  We finish our beers, but decide not to buy any, because honestly? We don’t need any, we don’t want to walk back to the car and they are crazy expensive.  Plus as more people come in, it is just getting tightly packed in there, so we decide to leave.  But, first we want a sticker. So I go to buy one, and the guy tells me it’s $3.  Well, I’m already committed, so I just pay him, but $3 for a sticker?  Then I think, oh, wait a minute.  Bet it was $1 for each beer tasting and then $1 for the sticker.  That would make way more sense. But no one ever told us that…..just conjecture on our part.

We’re a little too early for the Market, because we figured we’d spend more time at the brewery. We’re right next to Boardrunners, one of the dive bars here, so we went in for a drink.  Ok, its a dive, but we normally do well in dives. Not so much here.  The wine choices sucked.  I had water.  The beer choices sucked, Ed ended up with a Longboard, which is his least favorite Kona beer, by far.  To make matters worse they were blasting country music.  Argh.  This is just so not good.

We finally decide to leave, pay our bill, which is an astounding $5.75 for a happy hour crappy beer?  This place is off our list.  We walk through the market, which is bustling, then decide to head to Whole Foods for their bar – yes, we hate to do it, they’ve got a good reputation –and as it turns out have great wine and beer happy hour specials and great food specials. But we’re just drinking right now. 

In the end we decide to go out for dinner tonight, we try the Market, but they have a 45 minute wait, so we cross the street to Cactus which is traditionally our go to happy hour food place and just do pu pus.  I have the pork empanadas and goat cheese/yellow squash fritters while Ed has the empanadas and the killer cheese fundido.  They really know how to do tapas here.

Thoroughly stuffed, we head home to veg on the sofa and plan the rest of our time here in Kailua.

2/22–Kailua and the North Shore

We’re all settled in, we’ve stocked up on Poke for lunch, grilled our first steak meal out back last night, and have all clean clothes.  I sleep really late for some reason, so by the time we get our act together – get off the phone with NCL arguing about our refund, etc.) it’s too late to get coffee at the Market, but we do take our morning (mid-morning) walk anyway.

After lunch, we decide to head up to the North Shore to see what’s happening.  It’s a nice drive, and we are testing out the new GPS app we’ve just purchased. We were using the free trial version in New Zealand, and it worked well, but the trial version is over so we decide to bite the bullet and pay for it. It’s only $25 and it has offline maps worldwide.  So we are playing with it while we drive.  We know where we are going here, so it is probably a good thing we’re testing because there are some glitches. 

We hit Haleiwa, stop for some cokes at 7-11 and then go to wander the North Shore Marketplace, which is awash with people, mostly Asians. After a bathroom stop, we get back out on the road, heading toward the beaches and the Pipeline.  There’s not much going on in terms of waves, but oh my God, the people! We have never seen it this busy up here.  There are people everywhere.  The food trucks are packed. There are new food truck parks in at least 3 places, and they are all packed. It is amazing.  We end up just driving around, not stopping anyplace because it is so packed and there is nothing we want since we’ve already eaten lunch. 

Back at the cottage, we hang out a bit, then go to the Kailua Town Pub and Grill for happy hour.  Drinks, Kailua Pork sliders and wings for appetizers – really good (except for the fries that were cold, but we really didn’t need the fries anyway). Back home, we had what was left of the fried chicken we bought at Foodland and hung out the rest of the evening.

2/21–Travel day–twice–sort of

On our way to the airport we run into the traffic that Murray had warned us about.  It’s brutal, the lights take forever and there are way too many cars for the road to handle. It takes us a frustrating 45 minutes to go what should only take about 25.  But we eventually make it to the gas station off the airport road where we can get our 6 cent per gallon discount that we qualified for at New World.

Then onto the airport property in search of the rental car return. That was tough – all of  a sudden the signage just ends.  It directs you right up to the front of the terminal, then goes away.  As we drive past the departing flights drop off area, we can see the rental car signage on the huge parking deck, but there is no way to get there.  Argh.  Ed makes a quick left after the garage, and we circle it, actually finding the entrance for the returns by happenstance.  That could have been ugly.

Then we drop off the car and find we have a 5 or 10 minute walk to the International terminal.  Really?  There’s got to be a shuttle – what if it is raining? But, its a beautiful day, and the Hertz girl gives us a buggy to put our suitcases on, so we wheel our way over to the terminal and check in.

From there – it’s a breeze.  We have to check ourselves in at the kiosk, tag our bags ourselves and put them on the conveyer belt.  There are Air New Zealand (ANZ) folks there to help, but only minor assistance, they’re not doing it for you – just helping. But we get it all handled easily then head to security. On the way we stop at the bathroom and see all the customs forms posted all over. We grab a couple and sit down in the food court to fill them out.  Good move, since we need them to even get to security.

As we enter security, there is another ANZ representative there weighing the carry on bags.  They say you are only allowed 7KG but nobody usually weighs them. Not so here!  The girls in front of us get turned back and told to go back to the check in kiosks to check their bag – it’s too heavy. Uh oh.  Our bag weights in at 7.6KG, and I’m just about ready to reach in and grab our sneakers out of the thing, but they let us through – we got lucky!  Security is simple, we’re through and gone in no time – now we just have 3 hours before our flight. Ugh.

We hit the bar, spend most of our remaining New Zealand dollars, head to the gate, and spend our remaining 2 NZ dollars for a bag of chips – it was the only thing under 2 NZ anywhere.  We were left with 10 NZ cents. Good work.

We’re finally called to board and luck out with no one in the middle seat between us.  The flight goes well, food decent, same old movies, but we need to sleep anyway, so it didn’t matter.  We ended up sleeping a fair amount, then watched a couple of Boston Legal episodes, ate a surprisingly good scrambled egg breakfast and landed in Honolulu about 45 minutes early.

On the same day we left! It is so weird flying across the dateline.  We left Auckland, New Zealand at 9PM on 2/21 and we arrived in Honolulu at 5:45AM on 2/21.  Bizarre.

After taking the bus from the arrival terminal to the main terminal, we go through the Global Traveler passport line, which worked beautifully as we zipped right through, went down to baggage claim, and lo and behold, the bags were there.  Normally you get through passport control and you have to wait forever for the bags. Not so today, and we’re out the door and onto the Dollar rental car shuttle in record time.

There is no one at the rental car agency either, so we are on the road way before 7:00am.  Shocking.  Navigating our way to Kailua we are ever so thankful that we are heading in the opposite direction of traffic.  Oh my.  The back up on the highway goes on for miles and it’s virtually dead stop.  Our side is speeding along fine and we make it to the cottage by about 7:30. We are incredibly lucky that there was no one there the night before and Toni has let us check in whenever we arrive.  It is a wonderful little bonus.

So, we settle in, start our laundry, hit the grocery stores and then come back and sort of just laze the day away in our cute little Kailua retreat.

2/21–MOTAT in Auckland

Another hour’s worth of driving and we arrive at MOTAT, a fairly sprawling facility next to the Western Springs Stadium.  The parking is a bit challenging as we can’t really find a lot, just a few parallel spaces on Stadium Road. We do manage to find an easy space, though, and walk around the fenced perimeter into the front entrance.

MOTAT operates two sites – the Transportation section where we start our tour, and the Aviation area a bit down the road.  There is an historic tram that will take you between the two sites.  Since we are here, we start with Transportation and meander our way through the displays.  The first building we visit is the Western Springs Pumphouse, the first building in New Zealand to receive a UNESCO award.  It’s a beautiful brick building with the original wood flooring and original pumphouse located on 3 levels.  There are educational videos about the pumps, and how they were reconstructed here.  There are also lots of steam engines on display from different eras.  One of the most interesting is an engine that was once used to power a ferry.  The ferry sunk after it was broadsided and sliced in half by a mail boat, but the engine was salvaged, repaired and then put into storage.  Years later, a dairy purchased it to use in its processing plant. 

Next we explore the Discovery Dome which has a huge exhibit on Sir Edmund Hillary’s Antarctic expedition.  Oh, I could stay here for hours. But unfortunately we don’t have that kind of time.  It’s enough for us to skim over the material and read about the use of tractors and other machinery they used to travel across the frozen tundra to the South Pole.  There’s a great video in there too.

Leaving the Antarctic display, we wander through the other rooms with old fire station equipment, telecommunications history and then a print shop.  That brings us both back to our roots – Ed says it smells just like the Press, I’m taken back to my printing/press run days with DDVA. There are old block type printers and an original Heidelberg.  Neat.

Then it is back out into the fresh air to wander around the historic MOTAT village with replicas and actual historic cottages where engineers and settlers lived.

We tour a couple of old tram cars, then hit the restrooms, skirting all the kid’s areas to arrive at the front gate to await the tram to take us over to the aviation section. The tram takes about 5 minutes to get to the other facility, on the way passing the Western Springs park and the Auckland Zoo. 

Once at the Aviation museum, we set the timer on our phones to make sure we don’t miss the last tram back at 4:45.  That would be ugly – walking back to the car is not an option we want to consider.

The aviation museum has a great collection of historical planes.  Everything from war planes to bizarre little “airtruk”planes -

to old passenger planes –

all housed inside the immense hangar like building.

This is a great way to spend the end of our last day here in New Zealand.  We are waiting for the tram way before our alarm goes off, and are dropped off in front of the transport museum with plenty of time to make our way to the airport. We noticed that the museum is looking for tram driver volunteers.  This is the perfect job for Ed if we decide to emigrate!  What better way to spend his time than driving his beloved trams/trolleys around the museum.  That’s a plan.

2/21–Onerahi to Whangaparaoa Peninsula

We spend the last part of our morning just making sure we are packed correctly (we can only have 7K in our carry on bag – which isn’t as easy as it sounds) and finalizing our plans for today. Since our flight isn’t until 9pm, we have all day to get from Onerahi to Auckland – a 3 hour drive if we go straight. So we have picked out an area above Auckland to explore and have lunch, then we’ll visit the Museum of Transportation and Technology (MOTAT) before heading to the airport.

After packing up the car, we spend a few minutes chatting with Murray and Jenny, then bid them a fond farewell. They are the sweetest folks and have a wonderful apartment. Highly recommend staying there if anyone is ever interested. We’re on the road about 10:00 and with the exception of a little-Alice-taking-us-out-of-town-a-different-way-anxiety-attack, we’re off to a good start on our day’s journey.

It takes us about 2 hours to make it to the Whangaparaoa peninsula.  We are in desperate need of a bathroom, so instead of exploring the area first, we head straight to Stan’s Eatery in the Stanmore Bay area of Whangaparaoa.  We thought they were open from 9am, but apparently not today, as they are just putting out tables and getting things ready to go at 12 noon when we arrive. We are totally relieved – in more ways than one – and take a lovely table right by the open garage door type windows, overlooking the parking lot, but with a nice breeze that cools us off on this sunny day.

The owner? manager? who takes our orders is a doll. We get to chatting about the weather, travel and different things, she’s funny and chatty and makes the time go by quite quickly.  We’re torn between breakfast and lunch options – so end up ordering both:  Ed a huge breakfast plate and me a really good chicken and cheese quesadilla.

We figure we better fill up now because we won’t be eating for another 10 hours at least, an this meal fills the bill.

After lunch we do our explorations, first driving a few minutes down the hill behind the restaurant to go to the Stanmore Bay Beach – which is a beautiful stretch of sand on the bay.  There are a ton of people here, sunbathing, out on wave riders or just playing on the sand.  We hang out on a park bench for a while, soaking up a bit of sun and enjoying the lovely day.

We don’t stay too long, because a) we are on a schedule, and b) we don’t want to risk sun burn (heeding our the long discussion we just had with our Stan’s Eatery companion about the damage the sun can do – she’s a fanatic about not getting sun for all the very compelling obvious reasons.) Back in the car we head out to the end of the point to Shakespear Regional park (don’t know if they misspelled Shakespeare or if refers to someone else).

The drive takes us through a totally residential area with houses ranging from small little clapboard jobs, to larger more ornate places (but nothing like US McMansions).  Here and there little businesses pop up – like an Indian restaurant in a house in the middle of a neighborhood.  The zoning regulations here are obviously quite different than what we’re used to at home.  We reach the park and drive to the boat landing car park – you can’t go any farther in this direction because the road is fenced off and there is some sort of training center and military area beyond it.

But, we don’t need to go any farther – its nice here with great scenic views back toward Stanmore Bay. 

Plus this great sign:

Phew – glad to know we’re safe here today.  But I want to know what sign they put up if you’re not?  Look out for bullets?  You’re in danger – bombs coming your way? Duck and cover?

Oh well, we won’t ever know, as it is time for us to make our way closer to the airport and the MOTAT

2/20–Completing the Loop to Whangarei

Our next and last stop is the forest, 30 minutes down the road.  After leaving the coast, we drive up into the forest on a road that is canopied with trees.  We’re driving at a good clip, until we get behind a tractor trailer hauling enormous cut trees.  The driver kindly pulls over to let us pass, but just so happens to pull over blocking the parking area for Tane Mahuta.  Figures!  We pull off to the other side of the road and wave him on.  At least most of the drivers are pretty polite here – its probably a prerequisite to constantly driving these crazy little roads.

We clean our shoes at the start of the walkway (to protect the Kauri trees from the dieback disease, a fungus that can get into the soil and infect the Kauri tree roots), then walk the 5 minutes out to the big huge tree.  And big and huge don’t even begin to describe this behemoth.  We thought the trees in the AH Reed park were big – unh uh – nothing like this one:

Tane Mahuta means “Lord of the Forest” in Maori, and you can certainly see why the name was bestowed upon this tree.  No one knows for certain its age, but it is estimated to be between 1250 and 2000 years old.  The tree is so important to the country, that during the drought in 2013, close to 2,700 gallons of water from a nearby stream was diverted to keep the tree hydrated.

It’s time to hit the bricks.  It’s 3:30 and we still have at least a 2 hour drive back to Whangarei, so we hit the road, following and passing trucks hauling more huge logs, passing locals who have pulled over to let Mario “Ed” Andretti pass them, over rolling hills filled with cattle.  We watch as farmers feed their herds, the cows forming one long undulating line as they follow the tractor across the top of a hill grazing on the hay being dropped.  We watch cows coming home (when the cows come home – it really is an accurate saying), walking single file down a dirt pathway by the road. 

The long views up here as we traverse the hillsides are incredible.  Endless views of rolling hills dotted with trees, cattle and pastures, each more beautiful than the next as they are exposed with every new turn in the road. And trust us, there are many, many turns in the road. 

As we make the turn back to the west, we pass through Dargaville with the huge Wairoa River churning through the center of town.  The river is totally brown – which is odd since all we’ve seen so far are the clear crystal springs and rivers around the waterfalls. It’s weird, and as we pass tributaries and springs that flow into the Wairoa, the water is so brown it is sometimes hard to discern whether we are looking at fields or water. 

The rest of the trip is uneventful and we make it back to Whangarei and our little outpost of Onerahi easily.  We decide we don’t want to go out to eat tonight – so we stop at the New World grocery store and pick up some lamb leg steaks and a chicken breast with herb crumbed topping.  That will hold us, along with the left over snacks and beer and wine we still have at the apartment.  Why bother driving when we can eat at home in peace with a nice cool breeze overlooking the water? Done.

And so, that is exactly what we do, along with putting the final touches on our packing and planning our final day in New Zealand.

2/20–The big inland loop to Opononi

Across the country we go.  It’s a little over an hour to drive virtually coast to coast.  Of course Alice takes us on the scenic route on different roads and streets that we would never have taken.  So we first get the farmland tour – then the scenery starts to change as we head up and over the mountains to get to the other coast.  It’s a beautiful drive once again on the twisty little roads that define this country.

We set our sights on the visitor center in Opononi, figuring it is a good place to stop for additional information – and a bathroom break.  It’s a cute, quaint little town here, very laid back.  Between hotels and motels, there’s not a lot else here besides a couple of cafes and restaurants.  We find the tourist information place easily enough. There’s a cute little cafe there that smells heavenly, but we’ve already had our lunch, so we resist the enticing aromas and just chat with Liz, the local information expert. She tells us about an overlook just up the road in Omapere, and how to get to the Waipoua Forest to see Tane Mahuta, the largest known Kauri tree standing today.  I’m stoked, because I really wanted to see the tree, but didn’t think we’d make it this far.

Liz gives us a great map (which is totally necessary because Alice doesn’t know any of these town names – trying to find places has been impossible) and we make the Southward turn on our loop drive heading back toward Whangerei.

The lookout is fantastic – thank you Liz! And thank you Liz for telling us to walk all the way out to the point, and not to stop right after the parking lot like most folks do.  The scenery is well worth a couple minutes walk.

As you can see, it is a gorgeous day over here on the Kauri coast, we’ve left most of the overcast clouds behind.  The view from Omapere is spectacular, looking across the Hokianga Harbor to the huge sand dunes at North Head where you can go extreme sand boarding (maybe some other time!). 

Beautiful.

2/20–Kerikeri Rainbow Falls

It is a short 20 minute drive up to Kerikeri where there are a couple of waterfalls to view, and an old Stone Store of some sort.  We drive up the “highway,” the winding narrow 2 lane “highway,” and arrive at Kerikeri quite easily.  We decide to get gas here so we know we’ll have enough to get back to Whangarei and manage to figure out that this station is semi-self-service.  They pump, you go inside and pay.  We figured that out, after the attendant pumped the gas, then left to go service other cars. Ok. We’ve got it now.

Driving out of the station, we go right through town, but it’s sort of odd.  The road splits off and becomes one way – going the opposite direction – in the middle of town. So we have to circle the town – basically going around the block, to get back to the main road.  We can’t figure out why they’d do that – it’s just odd. And because I don’t think we’ll come back this way, we’ll never know if there was something special in that 2 or 3 block one-way road area.  Odd.

But, nonetheless, we successful drive through Kerikeri and find our way out to the Rainbow Falls park area.  There is a nice paved pathway leading to 3 different viewing areas.  While we didn’t see any rainbows, we did get some great views of the falls from different perspectives.

First glimpse:

Closer view, from a more sideways angle:

Then from the top pond, looking down toward the falls – oh, and right past the sheep pasture:

This is a nice little diversion, a good way to stretch out our legs and get some fresh air after all the driving. But now we have decisions to make. There is another waterfall nearby, the Wharepoke Falls, which is supposed to be just as good, if not better than Rainbow Falls.  However, it’s a 20 minute walk just to get into see the waterfall.  It’s almost 1:30 and we still want to try to make the loop across to the Kauri coast, so we decide to ditch Wharepoke, and just head out onto the road. 

2/20–Bay of Islands Coast and Haruru Falls

We backtrack out of Kawakawa and turn back onto SH 11 to skirt the coast and head up toward Opua and Pahia.  We are headed to Haruru Falls, but before we get there,we want to find a place to stop for our picnic lunch.  We are thinking Opua might be good, but as it turns out, the town is not on the main road, but off toward the coast, so we press on toward Pahai.

Just before we get to the town proper, we come across this little stretch of beach with picnic tables over looking the bay.  So, we decide to pull in here for our lunch break. And lo and behold – who is there with us?  The Cheech and Chong wicked van!

It’s a small country.  And BTW it is indeed a wicked van.  On the back is a saying “We take acid to make the world look like a better place.” And the URL to rent the van – wickedcamper.com. I had a picture, but somehow it got deleted from the phone.  User error.  Sigh.

We plop ourselves on one of the picnic benches and munch out on our remaining pepperoni, salami and cheese. And feed the slices that fell on the ground to the seagull who has attached itself to us.  It’s pretty funny watching it try to eat the whole slice, as it gets stuck on its beak. 

Lunch done, we make our way through Pahia and find the Haruru Falls which are a quick 2 minute walk to access – right off the road.  Haruru means “big noise” and you can definitely hear them as soon as you get out of the car in the car park.  The falls are a rare horseshoe shape, and quite pretty, even though they aren’t at full strength today.

On our way back to the car, we pass a collection of roosters and hens – just like Hawaii, they are everywhere.  These guys had little baby chicks though – so cute.  So we took some pictures, making sure to remember to stay as far away as we could – we weren’t about to make the roosters nervous or angry at us getting close to the chicks.  A Rooster attack was the last thing we wanted to incite today. 

Back out onto the road, we head further up the coast to KeriKeri for Rainbow Falls.

2/20–Northland–Kawakawa to Paihia

It only took us a little less than an hour to get to Matapouri from Whangarei.  Now it will take us another hour to drive to Kawakawa, but it will be worth it.  Not only is it on our way, but it is where the famous Hundertwasser’s Toilets are located.  They are even on the map – kid you not!

So, we figure it is worth the stop.  The drive up through the inland mountains is gorgeous. The road is nonstop turns and twists, through farmland and mountainous forests.  There are houses here and there, and little teeny tiny towns, but precious anything else.  Besides cattle that is. Lots and lots of cattle.

We arrive in the little town of Kawakawa and actually find a parking space right on main street – on our side of the street! Sweet success.  One of the attractions here, besides the toilets and the cute old fashioned down town area, is the vintage steam train which runs through the center of town – literally, there are tracks in the middle of the main street – and takes you on a scenic tour in the countryside.

We didn’t get to see the train (darn!) as they are back to only running a Friday, Saturday, Sunday schedule, but we did hit the bathrooms. So, here’s the story:  Friedensreich Hundertwasser, an Austrian architect first visited New Zealand in 1970, then came back and bought a farm outside of Kawakawa in 1975.   He became an NZ citizen in 1986 and was declared a national treasure in 1990.  He apparently was quite a recluse, but when the town commissioned him to build the toilet facility in 1997, he came out of his isolated lifestyle to oversee the project.

Truly?  The place is amazing.  You don’t know if you should go to the bathroom or just take pictures.  As one girl said to me today, this is most pictures I’ve ever taken of a bathroom.  I’m with ya sistah.  But look – here’s why – the ladies room:

Men’s room:

Out back:

Out front:

Amazing.  And the labor and talent used was all local, with tiles made by students from Kawakawa schools, bricks from local buildings and windows constructed from old bottles from around the district.  Really distinct. So definitely worth the pit stop…LOL.

Done with the toilets, we shopped through the Bakehouse, but didn’t find anything we really wanted to accompany our lunch. They had porchetta though – totally surprising, in New Zealand? – and though it was thoroughly tempting, we decided to pass and just hit the road heading now toward the main coast of the Bay of Islands.

2/20–The Northland Loop tour

It’s raining and windy again when we wake up, so we dawdle a bit over coffee and hope the weather clears. But eventually, we know we have to get moving. Our plans today are to cover as much Northland territory as possible – not as far a Cape Reinga which is about a 4 hour drive – without stops!   But we are hoping to get as far north as we can – up and out we go.

We are packed up (snacks for lunch, frozen water, 2 cans of coke) and in the car by 9:15.  Our first stop is the Tutukaka Coast, where we will drive through the cute little blink and you miss it town of Ngunguru, then two blinks and you’ve missed it Tutukaka and finally on to Matapouri, where we’ll stop to walk along Whale Bay so we can stretch our legs and see the scenery.

The initial driving is fairly easy, it’s all town streets until we get out of Whangarei, and then it becomes narrow little lanes and twisty turny roads.  Plus one lane bridges.  By the end of the day we’ll decide that every road here is just an extension of the Road to Hana – going on forever with switchbacks, twists, turns, narrow lanes, drop offs without guard rails and one lane bridges.  Crazy Kiwis.

However Ed is now in his element.  He’s completely comfortable driving on the left (except for the wiper/turn signal stalk confusion), so he’s taking corners and curves like Mario Andretti.  Even the local drivers are pulling over and letting him pass (either out of respect or fear – we’ll never know).  So he’s having a blast by the time we find Whale Bay and head out on the trail.

The weather has turned beautiful out by the coast, it’s sunny with a wonderful cool (almost chilly) breeze.  Walking down the short path, the views out to Whale Bay and Sandy Bar beach are stunning.

Walking further along we get even more coastal scenery through the trees.

The forest here is lush and green with all sorts of odd foliage growing about. The most interesting to us is the fern bush that is growing on one of the trees towering across the trail.

There is also this huge hollowed out tree on the path right outside the car park, which, if I really was adventurous (and didn’t hate bugs) I’d be able to walk into standing up to my full height.  As it is, I sort of stand in the “doorway” for a picture, then skeedaddle out of there. 

It’s great for a photo opp, but I’m still feeling itchy just thinking about it.

Nice little diversion here and wonderful scenery worth the drive.  Now we are looping back inland and heading to Kawakawa for the bathroom.  Yes, the bathroom…see the next post.