Our first adventute of the day took us to the Hokianga car ferry. The ferry runs across a small river and avoids a long drive around to the ancient kauri forests. It departs from north to south on the hour. We were hoping to catch the 11am ferry and just made it with a whole minute to spare!
The scenery along the river was beautiful and the ferry ride very slow and enjoyable. Although fairly short ...
We drove on to find Tane Mahuta, the lord of the forest! Tane Mahuta is a kauri tree... It has a 13.77m girth and is 51.50m. TRULY ENORMOUS and the largest in NZ! There is a disease killing off the kauri trees, so we had to disinfect our shoes before entering the ancient forest. We certainly wouldn't like to be responsible for killing 2000 year old trees!
We followed signs to a scenic viewpoint which turned out to be rather more than expected. There was an amazing walk around the headland offering breathtaking views of the sea and giant sand dunes!
On to the next stop, which turned out to be an intetesting one! We were running short on cash and the earlier ferry was more expensive than expected. We stopped at a small village to use the ATM (cash machine) but it was 'Out of Order'. No problem, we thought, there is bound to be one in the next village. There was none ... the only ATM was 40km away .... in the wrong direction! We eventually managed to persuade a little old lady running a tiny petrol station to give us some cash on our credit card in exchange for buying some of her petrol! We needed it to pay for our campsite which was in a kiwi zone!
From the campsite, we took a short walk into another part of the Kauri forest, but this time at night! Armed with a red light, we searched for little elusive, nocturnal kiwi. Our light needed new batteries and we really couldn't see much but we could hear the high pitched sound of the kiwi nearby. We went deeper into the forest, but got scared ... as we realised our light was so bad, we might not make it back!
Unfortunately we never spotted the rare kiwi. Maybe next time ...
The scenery along the river was beautiful and the ferry ride very slow and enjoyable. Although fairly short ...
We drove on to find Tane Mahuta, the lord of the forest! Tane Mahuta is a kauri tree... It has a 13.77m girth and is 51.50m. TRULY ENORMOUS and the largest in NZ! There is a disease killing off the kauri trees, so we had to disinfect our shoes before entering the ancient forest. We certainly wouldn't like to be responsible for killing 2000 year old trees!
We followed signs to a scenic viewpoint which turned out to be rather more than expected. There was an amazing walk around the headland offering breathtaking views of the sea and giant sand dunes!
On to the next stop, which turned out to be an intetesting one! We were running short on cash and the earlier ferry was more expensive than expected. We stopped at a small village to use the ATM (cash machine) but it was 'Out of Order'. No problem, we thought, there is bound to be one in the next village. There was none ... the only ATM was 40km away .... in the wrong direction! We eventually managed to persuade a little old lady running a tiny petrol station to give us some cash on our credit card in exchange for buying some of her petrol! We needed it to pay for our campsite which was in a kiwi zone!
From the campsite, we took a short walk into another part of the Kauri forest, but this time at night! Armed with a red light, we searched for little elusive, nocturnal kiwi. Our light needed new batteries and we really couldn't see much but we could hear the high pitched sound of the kiwi nearby. We went deeper into the forest, but got scared ... as we realised our light was so bad, we might not make it back!
Unfortunately we never spotted the rare kiwi. Maybe next time ...
