To the edge of the world

Kia Ora !

Do you remember when, some time ago already, I told you tha I went to the southermost point of NZ ? Well, this time I'm gonna take you to the far North of NZ : Northland ! So, contrary to what we have in our good old Europe, here North means sun, heat and beach. And that's what we had ! After visiting some forests where we saw the biggest tree in the country, we went to 90 miles beach, a 90 mile-long beach where it is possible to drive ! We had breakfast here and it felt really weird to drive on the sand !

Click to expand !

But as the tide was coming high, we had to leave the beach, and we ventured into a deep pine plantation .... for the worse ! Indeed, from a gravel road to another we finally arrived in sight of the highway only to get stuck in the sand with our 12 seat van .... After an hour of "engineering" to try to get out of it, we split up and looked for help around. With help from Bastien (on the picture above), a fellow French, we found some rather nice old farmers who, after 4 hours of waiting, helped us make it through the plantation. The positive side of that story is that we discovered the "wild" side of NZ, the deept countryside where no tourists go, and it was actually quite nice :)

After that, we arrived to the top of the peninsula, but we stopped some ks before it. Indeed, there's a place, beyond the hills, where a rather unusual and unexpected landscape hides : the giant dunes ! Yes, giant dunes ! If some of you know the dune du Pilat in France, it's the same, but bigger and there's many of them. When you're up there, it looks like the desert, really !

In the evening we finally made it to the edge, to the very top, the last step before the infinite ocean : cape Reinga. And there it was, that bloody lighthouse you can see everywhere on postcards ! It's true, it's an amazing place ! Water everywhere, and rocks, and a lot of wind. All what I like :-) And the sunset was just super pretty.

On the following day we came back to Hamilton along the east coast, where we made several stops to see waterfalls and nice harbours. A very nice trip, believe me !

Mig