For nor­mal people the hir­ing of a camper­van is simple.  How­ever, for us, well…

We did our usual thing of arriv­ing a full day ahead of the book­ing and yet some­how wan­gling ourselves a free upgrade and not being charged for the extra day.  I think that this is some­thing to do with the puppy-eyed faces Cesca can pull when things seem not to be going her way.  People all around rush to her aid, any­thing to pro­tect the inno­cent gen­tle­ness behind those eyes.  In another time such a power would have been called a mighty and ter­rible witch­craft — and per­haps I would have agreed with this Inquis­i­tion were it not for the fact that Cesca simply does not know that she does this! (and, of course, she has those eyes ready for me too…)

Any­way, after a little hag­gling we were given this:

[Cue A-TEAM intro music] “De de de… de de de… de-de-de-de-de… de-de-de-de!”

“Ten years ago, a crack com­mando unit was sent to New Zea­l­and for crimes they didn’t com­mit. Today, still wanted by the gov­ern­ment, they sur­vive as back­pack­ers of for­tune. If you have a prob­lem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…

…a camper­van?”

   

The Britz Camper­van – or “The Mam­moth” as it became known – was 6.6 meters long and almost 4 meters high.  It was a mon­ster of design, the insides replete with a full work­ing gas hob, a fridge, a shower, a toi­let, a sink, a microwave (!) and a double bed.  It was also, unfor­tu­nately, painted in the most ter­rible bright white col­our that made us stand out for miles around.  Hun­dreds of miles could pass for the cost of one one tank of diesel and its bat­ter­ies had enough elec­trical power to keep the inside lights going for 3 nights.  Finally, it stored 120 litres of fresh water and could tank 30 litres of waste water before need­ing empty­ing.  It was there­fore more a sort of house on wheels than a simple con­vey­ance.  A kind of mobile coun­try, as after all it did have “Britz” emblazoned on the side. Liv­ery that I took to be some sort of dire warn­ing to all and sun­dry that there were Eng­lish people at the con­trols of this beast and so they had bet­ter watch out!

Park­ing this thing was going to be fun, I could tell.

We stocked up at the super­mar­ket and headed north out of Auck­land towards the simply named “North­land”.  There is some­thing in that name that sug­ges­ted to me that the Kiwi’s were not totally enam­oured of the “north”; like it was a dif­fer­ent coun­try.  This feel­ing was seem­ingly con­firmed when the motor­way out of Auck­land quickly petered out and we were sud­denly trav­el­ling along the Kiwi ver­sion of main roads.  These are all over the coun­try and some­what scary. At any one moment they could sling around corners well over 180 degrees with only a few inches of road before a heart shat­ter­ing drop, or they might have given way to large slips that have taken 6 meter wide bites out of road.  Amaz­ingly these slips were old enough to be marked by line paint­ers.  That is to say they had got line paint­ers to draw lines around the miss­ing road sec­tions, but had not actu­ally repaired them!

We wound our way up the coast head­ing towards Waiwera and our first overnight stop.  Camp­ing in a van is not as easy as you would think.  New Zea­l­and has quite def­in­ite rules about where and when you can camp overnight and your options are lim­ited to find­ing a quiet road away from the cops, a rural DOC (Depart­ment Of Con­ser­va­tion) camp – basic­ally a sliver of grass and a long-drop toi­let — or a “powered site” in a hol­i­day camp.  These powered sites are par­cels of park­ing space along­side many other campers that come with drains for your waste and water taps to fill the tank.  Their main bene­fits are the 240 volts of power they provide, the hot showers, the laundry’s and the inter­net.  Their draw­back is the cost.  Our first night was a wal­let crunch­ing $36.  This shocked both Cesca and I and we laughed that this night was our “one extra expense”, but the joke was on us.  Little did we know at the time but $36 was about aver­age for the entire country. 

Sud­denly New Zea­l­and was over budget and we had only just arrived.

After that night we drove to Pahia and the Bay Of Islands via small hills and wind­ing coun­tryside roads.  It was at Pahia that we came across the ubi­quit­ous iSites for the first time and booked a jour­ney out onto the water that was depart­ing in the next hour.  But where to stay that night?  The iSite worker came up with a novel solution,

“Why not park overnight in the town’s car­park?  Nobody checks it any­way.”  This inform­a­tion meant a camp­ing cost of only $8 that night.  Per­haps New Zea­l­and would not be so fin­an­cially bad; we just needed to be smart about it.

Soon we were upon the deck of the “Kings” cruiser head­ing out through the bay. 

The islands are every­where; soft lumps of trees rising out of the dis­tant waters like giant green whales.  Their great num­ber seemed to me as almost unfair.  How could such a blessed coun­try exist that had so many beau­ti­ful islands so close together?  All other coun­tries would love to have such an aes­thetic abundance. 

 

I sud­denly recalled a Kiwi I had met back in Aus­tralia.  He had been most unim­pressed by the Aus­tralian fuss made over the Whitsunday’s and its majestic, but packed, beach.

“Ha!  We have a beach 20 times as long as this and no body on it!”  He had sneered derisively.

Could it be that New Zea­l­and would be like this all over?  A supra-blessed coun­try that all oth­ers would pale next to?  The wind blew into my face as I wondered about all this, its passing blow­ing in my ears, a sound only dis­turbed by the ever present click­ing of Cesca’s camera.

Soon we reached our voy­ages des­tin­a­tion: the Hole in the Rock.  A some­what touristy point, but the nat­ural hole in this small island attracts hun­dreds of thou­sands of vis­it­ors each year.  This is mainly because you can pass right through it. Our cap­tain skil­fully dir­ec­ted his ves­sel into the hole on one side, through the tun­nel and out the other side.  Obvi­ously this was all in a days work for him but it was impress­ive for us none the less.

 

The next day we left Pahia, awoken from our car­park camp­site by the next door Fire sta­tion set­ting off its mind bend­ingly loud alarm, and headed straight up the coast towards the myth­ical “90 Mile Beach”. 

This beach is actu­ally only 75 Miles long, but believe me when I say that this is long enough.  It is a straight large beach stretch­ing from the begin­ning of Hoki­anga Har­bour to the very top of Cape Reinga.  The jour­ney to the top of the cape is 104km by road and not under­taken lightly. 

One sol­it­ary road wends up the nar­row pen­in­sula through log­ging coun­try, low rolling hills full of sheep and little towns with very few places to refuel.  Even­tu­ally the road gives out and you are on some of the roughest gravel to be found in New Zea­l­and.  This being our first time on it we found it a very sober­ing exper­i­ence, as a flat tire here could be very nasty to deal with if it were on a tight corner or a steep slope.  We picked our way through wish­ing we could take the other route.

The other route was of course to drive along the beach itself.  How­ever, as much as this was a straighter line and there­fore shorter, it was only to be attemp­ted by the brave, the fool­ish and those with 4x4. 

As the tide recedes a short time-gap exists where the beach is hard enough to drive on.  Cor­rectly timed the hard sand will not dry into dunes before you get to the other end.  Fail to time it cor­rectly, fall­ing prey to the quicksand-like sand slips or simply get your engine or wheels bogged, and your vehicle will be claimed by the sea and become part of the legend.  All camper­van hire agree­ments stip­u­late avoid­ing it on pain of being unin­sured, but I real­ised that this was due to peoples’ poor tim­ing and not because it couldn’t be done – I saw on a flyer that a few coach trips do it.  The beach has only two entry points roughly speak­ing at the top and bot­tom.  We parked in the lower one and con­sidered the beach.

 

New Zea­l­and beaches have some­thing weird about them and it took us a few moments to real­ise what it was.  It’s the waves.  The beaches are con­stantly buf­feted by waves, as are all beaches, but only here have I seen so many at a time.  Line after line of white crests stretch back into the sea and the crash­ing of so many waves so close together on a beach of such prodi­gious size is a loud sound indeed.  It pos­sess an anim­al­istic unre­lent­ing roar that sticks in the mind and, for us, led to an intense feel­ing of peace. 

People love beaches as they love all of natures bound­ar­ies; where the land meets the sky, where the moun­tain meets the val­ley.  This is why we climb high moun­tains and walk long beaches, why we love har­bours and forests.  Humans love to stand on one side and look out at the other; towards the majesty of nature.

As you can ima­gine a 90 Mile Beach is a con­sumet place to engender such emo­tions.  It is where the mind meets the body, where the soul meets the mind and where ques­tions of one­self can be asked.

We loved it and went for a walk along the sands.  After a few hun­dred meters we came across someone else enjoy­ing the view; a snooz­ing seal.  We approached think­ing that he may have been hit by one of the many 4x4’s that race along the beach, but he raised his head and fixed me with a look that simply asked us to leave him alone.  Apart from the photo’s we took we did.

 

Leav­ing the beach we drove up the hills towards the far north point of New Zea­l­and; Cape Reinga light­house.  This was where the road became rougher than I had hitherto exper­i­enced.  The final assault was up a nar­row “road” that led to the com­plete let­down of a build­ing site.  The ter­rible road was in the pro­cess of being prop­erly tarmac’ed and this car park was being rebuilt.  We didn’t let that stop us but park­ing in the middle of such a place made me want to reach for the hard­hat just to leave the camper. 

We walked out of the car park, to the peak, and sud­denly saw what all the fuss was about.

The light­house clings to the end of the cliffs a couple of hun­dred meters down a hill.  The beauty of the vis­ion – all 180 degrees of it – was worth every penny I paid to come to New Zea­l­and.  On the left a few brave look­ing cliff walks led down to the very end of the beach and sand dunes.  Ahead sat the hill lead­ing to the shear cliff drop into the Tas­man sea.  This spot was tra­di­tion­ally the point that the Maori brought their dead.  Pre­sum­ably, being the most north­ern point, this meant that their souls went back across that water to the Poly­ne­sian Islands of their ances­try.  A mov­ing story when presen­ted with such a view.  The light house was on the right down a well paved path that swept into the side of the cliffs. 

 

I remem­ber think­ing that if this had been Eng­land then a lot more would have been made of this place.  More roads, more people, some shops, a chippy, etc.  New Zeal­anders on the other hand seemed to have a grasp of leav­ing things “wild and woolly” and giv­ing you a sense of the remote­ness, the isol­a­tion and the peace from people.  I cast a glance over my back at the build­ing site behind me and wondered how long that would last?

Cesca bounded up, a big smile on her face, she grasped and squeezed my hand, “Ready?” she asked.

I squeezed back and together we walked down to the lighthouse.

 

 

Part two coming…

 

 

Regards,

 

Basho

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