Highlights from up North in New Zealand

Snorceling on Poor Knights Island, Visiting Reinga, Hugging huge Kauri Trees

01.02.2011 - 07.03.2011 30 °C
View New Zealand in 2011 on tastingtheworld's travel map.

This is the story of cool things we did while being up north on the North Island in New Zealand. To be excact this is what we did after arriving in Auckland and travelling north.

Whangarei is a beautiful place on its own especially the "Little Earth Lodge" where we stayed is really great, but breathtakingly beautiful is the Poor Knights Island, which are some small islands near the coast of Tutukaka.
It is famous for its amazing diving territory.

Unfortunatelly we are both afraid of the open sea and are kind of terrified of diving, so we booked a snorkeling tour instead.
We were quite nervous beforehand - I mean it would still be the open ocean - but our courage was rewarded big time. There were so many colourfull fish everywhere and the island looked like a nature resort of past times. We had a great time snorceling and being in the water all day!

Leaving Whangarei behind us, we went further up north and stayed some days in Kaitaia right at the Ninty Mile Beach. As I'm sure you all already know, that the 90 Mile Beach is not really 90 Miles long, but a bit shorter, but I mean who cares? It is still an unbelievably long, sandy, beautiful beach where Steffi could show off her surfing skills and one could run along for miles.

Following up the ninty mile beach you get to Cape Reinga - the most northernest part of New Zealand. Here two Oceans - the Abel Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide - a point where it is always windy and the weather has to be misty. A magical place that is holy to the Maoris (the native people of New Zealand).

The last stop on our tour in the north was a forest with the biggest Kauri trees of New Zealand. The oldest living kauri tree is over 2000 years old and has a scope of nearly 14 meters. We didn't get to see that tree, but some very old and big ones where among them. It is really a lesson in humbleness to stand in front of such an old and big tree, that has been around the time when the christian religion wasn't even born yet.

Its hard to capture such hugeness, but we tried:

Being in the forest in New Zealand is always something magical. Be it the great silver fern trees, the huge kauri trees, the images of the lord of the rings or the fact, that there are no poisonous animals around, I could spend hours in the New Zealand (rain) forest.