"F" as in Whangarei (Nov 22-24)

We decided to head up to the northern part of the island to see the sights. Our first stop was in Whangarei where we viewed did a walk from the Whangarei Falls, through the Canopy walk and to another waterfall.  

The Whangarei Falls are 26metres high

Creek running from the falls

The canopy walk is built up 14metres high in the jungle (Trev's standing half way down the walkway)

Large Kauri Tree along canopy walk

Second waterfall along walk

Our next destination was a small village called Russel in the beautiful Bay of Islands area. The road out to Russel was incredibly curvy road full knuckle gripping switchbacks. Finally we came to an valley area with a straight portion of road where we decided to pull over to take some photos of some spotted pigs. We turned the ignition off to ensure we didn’t scare them away and a moment later attempted to restart the car. Unfortunately the batter died it that 1 minute of having the car off… and off course it started to rain, we weren’t in good cell service, the cell phone started to die and some bulls walked over mooing like they were gonna trample us… We tried calling AA but they did not know where we were (we later found out there are 2 towns with the same name and they had thought we were in the other one) and all of the people that stopped for us did not have jumper cables. Finally a gal pulled over and offered to drive back to her nearby farm to get cables and come back to boost us. Thank goodness for her! An hour or so later we were back on the road.

View from the drive

We stayed the night in Russel. It was an absolutely lovely town but of course it was a bit rainy. We decided it wasn’t great weather to do the island boat tour we were hoping to take around the Bay of Islands.

Oldest church in NZ, built in 1836, with surrounding cemetary in the small town of Russel.

Birds of paradise at our motel

 

View from our motel

The following morning we left Russel via ferry to Paihia and drove to Keri Keri. Keri Keri was a nice town full of all kinds of little shops and sites. Our favorite stop there was the Makana chocolate factory! Yumm! I also enjoyed my first two frozen coke’s from Mcdonalds! They don’t have 7-11 type places with slurpies… which I have been craving since we arrived… but they do have frozen coke at MD’s which is basically a coke slurpy. We also went to the Stone Store (oldest stone building in NZ), Kemp House (oldest wood building still standing in NZ), Rewa’s Village (recreation of a Maori village) and Rainbow Fall’s.

Stone Store

Trevor attempting to get in the cave behind the Rainbow Falls waterfall (he is on the right)

Rainbow Falls

Our second night spent up north was in Kaitaia. This was not exactly our favorite town.. not touristy at all and a bit run down. This was the first night that we did not ask to view a room before paying for it… bit of a mistake! Our hotel was really pretty old and gross. While sitting on the bed I felt a huge lump in the mattress. I stuck my hand under the bedsheet thinking it was a spring stuck out of the mattress… it was a pair of old sunglasses! I didn’t sleep much that night.. And we had no luck finding a restaurant so it was Subway that night.. The next day we were off to the nearby "90 Mile Beach". It is actually only around 60 miles long but still very impressive. I believe it was low tide when we were there as the beach was also extremely wide. This beach is actually considered a road and many tour buses and other vehicles can be seen speeding down the center of it where the sand is most hard.

Car driving down "90 Mile Beach"