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There's nothing to see!!
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Our journey south in Northland followed the west coast and the Tasman sea. We had been told that the west coast was really quite boring with nothing much to see or do but we couldn't disagree more with them. Our first stop was along 90 mile beach, although 90 kilometers would be a far more exact description. The beach is classed as a road and vehicles are allowed to drive up and down as long as it is 2 hours either side of low tide as you can get trapped and swallowed by the sea, as well there is quick sand where you have to keep moving or suffer the consequences - unfortunately our hire insurance does not cover driving on any beaches so that activity was a no go, we could have got a tour bus up there but still feeling quite independant, we decided not to bother. On the north side of the beach there are huge sand dunes which you can sandboard on but we couldn't get hold of any boards, this was probably a good thing as I'm sure we would spent several subsequent hours in an A&E somewhere nursing Kev's injuries!! The beach, however, was not a busy highway and each time we took a turning some 40 minutes down the road, the same beach would be just as deserted with no end visible in either direction. From here we drove to Ahipara and spent the night there to continue the next day southwards. We drove through some lovely farmland and rural countryside with rolling hills, there were many times when we had to remind ourselves that we were in NZ as often it looked like we were driving through the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District or the Derbyshire Dales only the cows and sheep appeared so much prettier than at home!! The beaches along this coast were all so pristine and deserted that we wished we had more time to spend, but the weather still wasn't that warm so swimming in the sea was still a no go. We continued on to the great kauri tree forest and took a small walk to see several of these giants. The kauri tree at one time covered NZ, they live for thousands of years and grow to 3 meters plus in diameter. They were used by the maori for building waka canoes, but they only used trees that had fallen naturally. When the European settlers came the financial potential of these trees was discovered, this led to a boom of felling and gum collecting until the trees were all but nearly extinct. They are now protected and people are planting new kauri trees all over the north island in a bid to regenerate the native forest but this will take years as the tree grows so slowly, the big beauty that we saw was thought to have been a seedling at the time Jesus Christ was said to be roaming the lands! We stopped that night in a DOC site in the middle of the forest, it had a forest walk that we followed the next morning and saw many native trees and birds - the birds, however, are mostly not native as many were brought over from the UK in an acclimatisation programme! The following day saw a long drive with only a few stop-off's at various points of interest mainly beaches, an old volcanoe and some well needed coffee and hot chocolate. We ended up in a place called Helensville and we were in for a treat as the campsite joined a swimming pool complex that was fed by a natural spring, so warm water pools inside and out and a big kid treat of a water slide!
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