New Zealand – Day 7 – Tuesday, February 28th, 2017

Another nice day. +26 mostly sunny with light winds. 

Today’s journey takes us further north along New Zealand’s North Island to the furthermost point of Cape Reinga. Along the way we will stop for coffee on the water at a popular bay, experience gumdiggers at work, see the disappearing Kauri tree, see some sand surfing and travel to the most northern reaches of the peninsula and New Zealand at Cape Reinga ending our day at Ahipara. 

Our first stop is at Mangonui,  famous for its fish and chips. A little too early for fish and chips, so we had a long black coffee that was a cup of coffee or 1/2 a cup of very strong coffee and a small container of hot water to top up the extremely strong coffee – making it drinkable. The views from the dockside café were amazing. 

Of importance to New Zealand’s history was the work of the gumdiggers, so we stopped at a representation of where they “worked” digging gum from the depths of the roots of the Kauri trees. Not a glamorous job from the stories we observed. 

Kauri trees and Kauri gum played an important part in New Zealand’s history starting around 1814. They are separate stories but are linked that began 220 million years ago. To keep the story short we look back a “few” years ago.  

Let’s start with the Kauri tree and the sap or resin (1814), when the tree is damaged it produces a large amount of sap that covers wounds and eventually falls off and over time becomes fossilized. It is buried and to recover it diggers had to dig deep in water-filled trenches for the gum or as it is now known, NZ Amber. Pretty expensive stuff. This is what the gumdigger’s produced while digging around the roots of the trees. From the tour, it became clear that the job was tough digging down 12 feet or deeper into some pretty wet and bug-filled ditches and tunnels. While they started at the surface they inadvertently unearthed 220 million-year-old forests of Kauri trees. These trees while buried, were pristinely intact and used in the forestry industry. In a few days, you will see photos of these “swamp” trees.  

Further north along we arrived at the Te Paki sand dunes, a bit stunning to see dunes of this size here as one expects these to be in a desert-like the Sahara.  But here they are with the biggest feature being people surfing down the dune. We saw what looked like more experienced surfers climbing up dunes in the distance but we decided not to follow them. We did get to see tourists trying it for the first time. Fun to watch but this activity did not interest us. 

Kauri trees are also a very important part of the history of New Zealand. These trees were harvested to the point of near extinction mostly for the wood. The story of the Kauri trees continues in the upcoming days. 

Reached the lighthouse at the cape, winding roads, sunny day, light winds, beautiful scenery. The lighthouse is the northernmost point of New Zealand. This is where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet. 

Back southward we are on our way to our destination for tonight Ahipara. On some seriously winding roads, we arrive at our motel. 

Another motor court motel. Upon arrival, the two women in the unit next to us seemed to be quite agitated. They were speaking to each other in German and kept going back and forth to their car. A short while later a car “tyre” replacement truck arrived. They were not happy. We did not engage in conversation with them. It seemed obvious their tire was dead.

Ahipara is on the west coast of New Zealand and is noted for its spectacular sunsets.