The Far North

After a few hours on the road, driving on the left side got rather comfortable. The intersections were still tricky, especially looking to the right for oncoming traffic!! Our destination was the Bay of Islands, an area on the upper east coast which is known for its boating and the multitude of small islands that are throughout the bay, good name I guess. The interesting thing about New Zealand driving is that all the roads are small, even their major highways are two lanes. Thankfully, there are not a lot of cars, so driving is pretty calm. The weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky and about 70 degrees. This would be the norm for the next week. Bay of Islands was a nice harbor town, but definitely angled towards tourism and boating, not that there is anything wrong with it, but more than we wanted to be around. Since we were headed this direction for surf and not tourist areas, we decided to press on and try and reach Shipwrecks Bay. For those that don’t know, Shipwrecks Bay is still a somewhat mysterious and fickle surf spot that when good, can produce a left point break that peels for almost one mile!! It was actually featured in the original “Endless Summer” movie, and I was hoping to get lucky. It is located at the south end of an area known as Ninety Mile Beach, an incredible crescent shape beach that extends all the way to the northern tip of the country. The odd thing is the Beach is only 52 miles long and New Zealand uses kilometers not miles – figure that one out.

We rolled into town (Apihara) and found the local, and only, campervan site. This place is definitely on the edge of a lot of remoteness, hardly any people (i.e. development) and huge natural vistas. Absolutely amazing. Drove to the beach and it was flat… Now normally I would call this a “goose egg” of a surf trip, but this place was so incredible, I forgot about surfing. After a full day of driving, we all needed something to do, so I started looking for fun. Boy, did I find it! Tua Tua Adventure Tours located right in the middle of town had 3 hour ATV tours out to what they call the “free land”. I called them up and got booked for the next morning’s tour. The owner, Greg, has been doing these tours for over ten years, and he still gets stocked to get people out there. Got going around ten in the morning and it was awesome. Mat got to drive his own ATV, so he was psyched and even though Sally had never driven one beyond our yard, she got the “Biggest Air” award. More details to follow. We went all the way out past the point of Shipwrecks Bay and got to see the setup for the break, if there is swell. They call it “free land” because it is basically open land and anyone can use it and live there if you like. We eventually started up into the hills and came into the largest sand dunes I have ever seen. They stretched for miles and were about five hundred feet tall. There were trails through the scrub and we worked our way all the way to the summit of a large section. At this point, we broke out the sand boards and starting sledding/surfing down some very steep and tall dunes. Tons of fun and you get to eat lots of sand!! Check out “Where in the World are the Reeve Boys” for some pics.

The next day we headed south in search of one of the oldest trees in the world. The Kauri trees are New Zealand’s version of our Redwoods. They don’t grow quite as tall, but are just as wide. The oldest of these is Tane Muhuta (Lord of the Forest) located in the Waipoua National Forest. This tree is 52 meters tall and 14 meters wide and has been dated to being over 2000 years old… the tree was here before Christ!!! There is a special elevated trail through the forest to see it, and protect the sacred ground that it and several others grow in. I have included some pics in “Friends Along the Way”, but they don’t do it justice or convey the feeling you have when standing next to a living organism that predates our Christian calendar. From here we continued south to the mecca surf spot of Raglan. One of the top five left point breaks in the world, and a spot I have dreamed of surfing since I was Mat’s age. I was definitely “Praying for Surf”.