Northland

After two quiet days in Auckland Aaron and I decided to have one last trip before selling the car, so we got up Tuesday morning and headed for the Northland. The Northland is the long stretch of twin coast beaches north of Auckland and its beautiful. We went up on a hot sunny day and planned to stay there laying around on various beaches until Friday, but lucky us a storm blew in Wednesday morning and we only lasted out there until the wind kept us up all Wednesday night and headed back to Rich and Cassy's Thursday morning. There were good parts in between though.
Tuesday we drove all the way up to the Bay of Islands which turned out to be a longer drive than we expected, but beautiful winding through rolling hills and coastline. The towns around the bay of islands are the most populated and touristy of the Northland. The bay itself is just as it says, big and full of little islands and the marina was busy with ferries and helicopters taking loads of people out to the different islands for swimming, fishing, bird watching and other tours. We explored the downtown area but decided not to bother with ferries and drive further up the coast instead to find a less populated area. We found this camp site about half way up the east side of the twin coasts called Rarawa right on the beach. The sand was bright white and velvety soft and the water was crystal clear with nothing in it except for the odd shell. The dunes were marked off because several families of oyster catches were nesting, something we didn't notice until one of them came flying at our heads screaming, once we noticed we enjoyed looking at the chicks from a distance. When the sun began to set the clouds were bright purple and orange and they reflected in the long tide of the beach like a mirror. It was probably one of the best photo opportunities we have had this whole trip so it was a good thing we forgot the camera. Oh well. The water was so warm and clear though we walked around in it until the sun went down. The tides are so long and flat here that you can walk out a really good distance into the water and have it barely reach your knees.
We got up the next morning to go swimming but the first gust of the storm were blowing clouds in and even the warm water wasn't enough to get us in. Instead we drove up to the cape, Cape Reinga. Cape Reinga was originally important to the Mauri because it is the place spirits fly from on their way home to the place of their ancestors. Later a Mauri man looking for enlightenment went there to hear the spirits leaving and made a prophecy that one day a light would shine on the world from that point, and two hundred years later or so a lighthouse was built there. There are also crazy views of amazingly long beaches and sand dunes and straight out from the light house you can see the swirls and torments of water where the Tasman Sea collides with the Pacific ocean.
The sand dunes looked so fun from the distance that we drove out to them next. After crossing a stream and climbing the steep side of the huge dune that blocks the rest, we were sand blasted from head to toe so we ran across to get a view of the ocean and then jumped back down the side to escape the wind.
We realized that a lot of 4 wheel drive cars had gotten to the sad dues by driving along 90mile beach, which is more like 65miles long, because its faster at low tide so we decided our next stop should be there. The water was clear and beautiful like Rarawa except it was mainly used for fishing and so many people were driving up and down looking for good fishing spots and four wheeling that it felt more like a long wet highway than a beach. Rich and Cassy had said that if we drove down to the town at the southern point it was much nicer. There were still a lot of cars but the weather had warmed up enough that we got about a half hour of body surfing in before it started raining.
We decided to try another beach camping area that night because it looked nice, but ended up driving much further than we thought we would have to and when we got there found out that the water was contaminated and you couldn't swim in it. That was also when the storm really started to roll in and we were kept up all night by loud swirling wind that pulled our tent stakes out of the ground making out tent breath around us with the wind waking us up every half hour or so.
Oh well, at least it was nice for two days, I just wish we could have taken advantage of some of those beaches a little more.