More Mangawahi with Gary & Sarah (Nov 25-26)

Uncle Gary took us on a day long Tiki Tour to see the sites in the towns and areas surrounding Mangawhai. We visited Pakiri Camp Ground & Beach first, where Rex and his brothers would camp and party hard as teens. Leigh, a small town with a beautiful boat dock/fishing bay. Mahurangi Bay, a beautiful bay, where we had the pleasure of meeting Rex’s aunty Margaret.   The town of Matakana where Sarah & Gary own The Cream of Matakana – an eclectic gift shop full of all kinds of interesting items. The town of Wakworth, where we saw a GIANT Kauri tree.

Trevor with his uncle Gary at Pakiri Beach

Old sign at the Pakiri Camp Ground

Views from the drive

Boat dock - Leigh

On Margaret Lister's drive way gate

View from Margaret's deck - Trevor, Gary & Margaret

 

Trevor and I with Margaret. She was trying to hang onto us and stand on her tippy-toes to look tall too :)

Strange patterns in the rock covered with mussels. -  Bay down the road from Margaret's home

Giant Kauri Tree in Walkworth

The Cream of Matakana - Sarah & Gary's store with the cutest cows out front

Sarah & Gary in their store



Time for another delicous dinner at Sarah & Gary's

And the next day a final dinner in Mangawhai at Kim & Arian's new home away from home



"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"

Mangawhai and Area (Nov 19-22)

Next stop... Gary Listers home in Mangawhai (North of Auckland). Gary and Sarah have a lovely home with a small vineyard way up on the hill overlooking Mangawhai, the water and Hen Island.


View of the ocean and Hen Island



Their small person vineyard just below the house





Gary talking to Rex on the phone

Sarah took Trevor, Arian, Kim (couple from Holland also staying with Gary & Sarah) and I to view a couple of local sites that Airan & Kim had found in a guidebook.. Piroa Falls and the Waipu Caves.

Piroa Falls. Trevor climbing right up to the falls

The book instructed us to go into a tiny cave and wait for our eyes to adjust to the dark. Than proceed on into chamber 1, 2 and 3 to view all the glowworms. Going from chamber 1 to 2 was just a bit of climbing around and over rocks. Going from the 2nd to the 3rd was a bit more difficult as we had to duck down through a low passage while walking through the water. It was a bit scary and out of my comfort zone... specially since on the guided tours in Waitomo they had said there were eels in their cave waters so there was a chance there were also eels in these cave waters but it was well worth it as there were more glowworms within this cave than we had seen in the pricey tours from Waitomo and this was free.  



Entering Waipu Cave



Trevor ducking down and making his way through the water to get to the 3rd chamber of the cave. The water got to nearly waist deep so we used our flashlights to spot larger rocks and try to make our way from rock to rock.

Arian & Kim used their expensive camera set on a slow shutter speed to capture the glowworms behind us and quickly flicked on and off a flashlight to spotlight us in the photo. Pretty cool!

Cluster of glowworms above us

Mangawhai Beach a short drive from Gary's house

Rotorua, Lake Taupo, Waitomo "Tiki Tour" (Nov 15-19).. Continued

 Continued....

Gyser in Rotorua



....On our way out of Rotorua we stopped to see the show at the Agrodome. It was too funny! They had all kinds of sheep breeds on display and did a sheep shearing demonstration on stage. We decided that one of the sheep kinda looked like a Eugene.. hahaha



Different breeds of sheep with dogs balancing on top, at the Agrodome.

"The Lister" at the Agrowdome. I believe it was an old sheep shearing device.

We were only in Lake Taupo for one night and did not see much unfortunately as it was pouring pretty much the entire time we were there. We did manage to hike out to a pretty powerful waterfall called Huka Falls while we were there though.

Next stop, Waitomo.. This area is full of all kinds of caves and cave tours. We did 2 tours here; the first one was the Glowworm Caves. They take you one a bit of a walk through a cave and than towards the end put you and a pile of others onto a row boat, on a river running through the cave, in the dark. From the boat you can look up to see all these glowing dots. It is a lot like looking at a beautiful starry sky. We learned that the glowworm is basically a larvae or worm that has a glowing butt. It captures insects to eat while it grows and eventually turns into a fly. The strange part is that it becomes a fly without a mouth and only lives 2-5 days before dying.

Standing at the point where we exited the cave on a row boat



Brochure of the two cave tours we took in Waitomo

The second tour we did was a 1.5 hour (1.6km) walking tour through another cave called Ruakuri. You enter the cave by walking down this large spiral walk way to the cave way underground. They have a walkway and small lights positioned along the way so that you can see some of the features of the cave. At one point we were asked to walk several minutes without any lights which was pretty freaky as it was pitch black and you could hear dripping sounds and running water from the river far below.

Spiral walk way taking us way down into the cave

Walkway through the cave. It was extremely dark so I was forced to use my flash and temporarily blind everyone to get any decent photos.

Guy hanging way up, with river below, installing anchors for a new cave tour. The new tour will have people repelling up, down and from side to side through the caves on a cable system.

Threads hanging from the glowworms. This is how they catch the bugs they eat.

Photo (without flash) of trevor walking infront of me

Scallops in the cave rock