This may be shorter than I originally intended as I managed to lose all I had previously written!
Tomorrow is our last full day in New Zealand, over 5 weeks since we arrived here.
This morning was bright and warm. After breakfast we headed out to 90 mile beach, which for some obscure reason is only 64 miles long. The beach runs up the west side of the Aupori Peninsular (the long bit that sticks out at the top of the North Island). What makes the beach unique (to us) is the fact that it is part of the highway system and is treated as a road under the road traffic act. Of course we had to go drive on it; the only thing o remember is to remain between the water and the high water mark, outside of those limits you either get wet, or bogged down in soft sand.
Our Car on the Beach
View Along 90 Mile Beach
Next stop was the Herekuno forest, home of a number of Kurai trees. These trees live to over 2000 years, and grow to be pretty large. The one below is 51.5 metres tall and 10m across. Smaller versions of these trees are used to make the Maori war canoes.
The BIG Tree
Talking of trees, can anyone identify this one
Mystery Tree
As usual we took the back roads, which today required us using a car ferry, not as grand as the previous ferry we had been on, but it did the job.
Car Ferry
One thing that has been quite common, but I haven’t commented on yet, is the suicidal tendency of NZ birds. Apart from being very late in alighting from the road surface as you approach them, they very often fly very close across the front of the car, quite often they will get half way across and the turn back, very disconcerting, and on more than one occasion I have ducked to miss them! So far there has only been one fatality, and that was solely the birds fault. It flew into the side of the car. If a small bird can’t avoid the side of a big car, well……….
We continued on towards the hotel with stops for scenery viewing and beach walking, getting to our destination around 3:30. This left Lyn plenty of time to re-acquaint herself with the washing machine.
View From the Passenger Seat
This was only the second hotel that we had stayed at that was not in same chain as the others, and it showed. It wasn’t a disaster, but it could have been better. Staying with the same chain had served us well. We stayed enough times to get two free nights, but more importantly we knew that the quality of the accommodation would be consistent.
Tomorrow we head off on our last day of travels down to Auckland.