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.
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