Living with the Kiwis: Northern Beach Hopping

Getting the gorgeous weather we were hoping for, we started in Maitai/Karikari Bay at a beautiful, HUGE beach with blue blue water and really nice sand and lots of pretty shells. It was basically deserted!! We were the 2nd group to occupy it that morning and later on when there were about 12 people on the beach, we talked to some people who said they lived up the road and said this was the most people they’ve ever seen on the beach! It is pretty far out at the end of a fairly empty peninsula but definitely worth the drive as far as we were concerned. Next we decided to check out Rangiputa beach as it was a recommendation, but it wasn’t quite as empty and much less impressive because we were expecting even nicer and more secluded than the first one we went to. We decided (since we were driving all the way back to Auckland tonight) to carry on our beach tour and drove up to 90 mile beach, the northern most west coast of the country where the beach goes all the way up to Cape Reinga. You can even drive up there along the beach via one of it’s many access points! And we found it hilarious that the road going onto the beach the speed limit was 50 k/h and once you were on the beach it was 100 k/h, same as the highway!! It was a lot of fun though and the surf was awesome, lots of nice waves to play in! We kept driving down the west coast, or just inland from the coast, took the carry ferry which across the Hokianga harbor and stopped at a really nice scenic lookout place at its entrance. Then we drove through the Kauri Forest where we visited Tane Mahuta, the huge, ancient Kauri tree. He was massive!!Here is where the last photos of the trip were taking, bringing the grand total to about 3,600! I managed to get it down to about 1,800 on my computer. Overall, it was a great holiday and we saw more of the country than most Kiwis have! We covered 4000k in the campervan and 1000 in the rental car, so 5000k in three weeks, not bad.