Sand boarding at Cape Reinga

  Cape Reinga, New Zealand
Sunday, January 20, 2008

Horticultural work is mind numbingly boring and the only thing keeping me sane is my planned trip to Cape Reinga and Ninety Mile Beach (which is an over exaggeration as it is only just over 100 km long!!!). Eventually my day off on Sunday arrived and so did the rain, but that isn't going to stop me enjoying myself today. In an attempt to keep costs down for the 450 km roundtrip, I offered myself as a taxi service and within days of advertising this, my car was fully booked.

So Sunday arrived, and our planned early departure was scrapped thanks to the Irish girl waking up late after spending the previous night in someone else's bed. Luckily she wasn't too late and we commenced our journey north through the windy single lane roads. With the lack of traffic on the road you could drive these roads like a maniac but unfortunately my 'people carrier' struggled up most inclines and 100 km.p.h suddenly drops to 60 km.p.h much to the annoyance of the occasional driver behind me. The last 20 km to Cape Reinga is a winding, bumpy gravel road which greatly increased our travelling time and finally 3.5 hours after setting off, we finally arrived at the Cape. From the car park there was a 5 minute walk through the gale force wind to the isolated lighthouse on the end of the peninsula which overlooks the water where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide, clearly identified by a line of waves crashing into each other.


View from the lighthouse at Cape Reinga and the isolated tree which is where the Maouri spirit walk off into the sea and into their afterlife.  


The meeting point of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The crashing waves can be as high as 10 metres in stormy conditions 

Our next stop, involved us driving back along the gravel road until we reached the start of 90 mile beach and a few large sand dunes. Here you can rent a piece of polystyrene for sandboarding down the dune slope for an expensive 15 Dollars an hour, but since we were only going to be here the once we rented 2 boards between the group. The biggest challenge was climbing up the Te Paki sand dunes in a fine drizzle and having to endure a sandstorm blasting at you, very tiring work trying not to get blown over!! Finally you reach the top and the 10 minute hike up the slope is replaced by a 5 second adrenaline thrill as you get to sandboard back down but if you catch someone's footprint on the sandy slope there is a high chance your board will flip and you'll end up cart wheeling down. I only did it the once and a 1480 degree flip left me slightly disorientated but that didn't stop me brushing the sand off and repeating the above process. However by the time an hour had passed, I was completely exhausted and was very happy to return my rented board.


Battling up the Sand Dune.

Next up was another 20 km drive along gravel road to a campsite in a secluded cove, where I dropped off two of my passengers who were spending a few days hiking in the Te Paki Recreation Reserve. By now it was almost 6 pm and my original plan was to drive back on the 90 Mile Beach, however I chickened out due to only a small window of time remaining before high tide arrived and the fear of damaging my car.
On the return journey we stopped at Mangonui to experience the tastiest fish and chips in the Northland region (it didn't disappoint!) before finally arriving back in Kerikeri, exhausted from a long day driving and in desperate need of a shower to remove the unwanted sand brought back from the dunes.