The majesty of the Cape was long lived in our minds, but we had to move on even­tu­ally.  We climbed back into The Mam­moth and headed back down the coast towards Hoki­anga Har­bour, which marks the lower end point of 90 Mile Beach and the start of the Kauri Coast.

The jour­ney down took the best part of the day and it was get­ting dark and rain­ing hard by the time we got to the road lead­ing to the Kohu Kohu ferry.  As we drove down the access road I heard the sound I had been dread­ing; the sound of a flat tire.  We man­aged to limp onto the jetty and look at the time table.  A ferry was due in 5 minutes – no way to change the tire by then – and the last of the day was due 20 minutes later. 

The ferry did arrive and the crew offered their apo­lo­gies but insisted that we must change the tire before board­ing. I could hear a slight chuckle in their voices and they whistled and shook their heads.

Thus we had our chal­lenge: could we change it before their return?

Bloody right we could! 

Put­ting on my rain coat I lay in the wet and loosed the spare tire, while Cesca found the jack and star­ted on the nuts.  I had never changed a large vehicle’s tire before, but luck­ily for me the enorm­ous 10-ton jack had dia­grams explain­ing where to put everything and a help­ful pic­ture show­ing that drop­ping the van on my head was not a good idea.  Get­ting the nuts loosened took every ounce of my strength and pulled skin from my hands.  Then the jack went in.  The wind­ing of the jack was geared so that max­imum effort gave a smooth but deadly slow lift.  Cesca could see the ferry in the dis­tance, mak­ing its way back.

“Go put a cup of tea on!” I gasped as rain seared down my face.

“What? You want tea now?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes please, and get a towel ready!” I called back.

I wound, and wound, and thought of all the Goju Kar­ate les­sons I could.  My heart poun­ded and my clothes were sod­den with rain.  Even­tu­ally the flat-tire came off and the new wheel went on.  Damn my hands!  The cold was freez­ing my fin­gers mak­ing it harder to tighten the nuts that Cesca was passing me.  The ferry was almost back and I could hear the pound­ing of its engines clearly.  Rush­ing as fast as I could I rolled the flat tire around to the back and into the brace under the rear and then sped into the cab.  Coat off, face tow­elled, soaked trousers changed, tea in hand — all in under ten seconds.

The ferry arrived and we smoothly drove down onto the ramp.  The crew­man from earlier came up to the window,

“Get it done then hey?” he asked smiling.

As non­chal­antly as pos­sible I looked up from my paper and across at him,

“Of course, old boy” I smiled and sipped my tea and then dunked a bis­cuit.  He smiled back through the rain and nod­ded – a small sign of respect.  Well, at least the Eng­lish repu­ta­tion around here was up a few notches!

The next day we stopped to get the tire repaired and made it to Hoki­anga.  The har­bour itself is very very large and not at all like its name sug­gests.  This isn’t a Newcastle-like hive of activ­ity.  This area of the the coun­try is amaz­ingly under­developed and grace­ful curve of the coast is nestled by age old Marui vil­lages and few loc­als. The quiet drive to the mouth of the inlet was very peace­ful.  The mouth is where all the action lies and is stun­ningly beautiful.

We stopped at the head of the har­bour and mar­velled at the meet­ing of the waters

It was a bright and clear day and the walk did us good.  Stand­ing on this head­land gave us a great impres­sion of the scale of things here.  Many people rush the North­land, or even skip it – decid­ing instead to head straight down from Ack­land.  Truly, these people have missed out.  As is usual at these times, Cesca and I con­tin­ued our deeper dis­cus­sions.  This was the begin­ning of a theme for us: “What sort of place do you want to live?”  This decept­ively simple ques­tion brings up all sort of oth­ers and like all great ques­tions requires a long time to decide. I sug­ges­ted to Cesca that she try read­ing some Buddhism texts of mine.  Little did I know how she would take this advice to heart…

We ground away a hour on that sub­ject while watch­ing the sea grind away the sand dunes.  Then we headed into the forest.

This is called the Kauri coast for a very good reason, all along the 110km of exist a superb forest sanc­tu­ary.  The last remains of even lar­ger ancient North­ern forests and con­tain­ing the largest of trees you will ever see; the mighty Karui them­selves.  These mighty plants have been hold­ing court here for over 2000 years and are increas­ingly rare.  Unsur­pris­ingly, the remain­ing ones are very pro­tec­ted.  Tane Mahuta (God of the forest) was marked as a short walk from the road.  We parked up and made our way in, slightly scep­tical that we would see it clearly amongst all the other trees in the can­opy.  The path lead around and Cesca asked, which one was the God?  I pro­fessed a mock­ing laugh that the tree was hid­ing and then, as I turned, I saw it,

“Fuck­ing hell!” I exclaimed.

At 51m tall and 13m round, Tane Mahuta is the largest damn tree I have ever seen.  It dwarfs the trees all around and they were not short.  A simply enorm­ous trunk leads up to branches the size of lesser trees, like trees grow­ing out of a mother-tree.  Every­one is awed by it and the con­ver­sa­tion is muffled and quiet around its basin.  Majestic indeed. 

Cesca was glad to have a wide angle lens for this one!  We passed on still talk­ing about the trees size. 

It was a few days until our 4th wed­ding anniversary and we had plans to spend it some­where romantic.  So we pushed hard passed Auck­land and around to the Coro­man­del.  I felt sorry to leave the North­land because, as a start­ing taste of New Zea­l­and, it was a great deal of fun and not a little romantic already.

(Now passing you over to Francesca)

New Zealand’s North­land holds many gems for the wide-eyed trav­el­ler, but it is The Coro­man­del Pen­in­su­lar that is held in par­tic­u­larly high regard by both Kiwis and tour­ists alike. Evid­ently this is due to the rugged wil­der­ness and beach life-style, which suits us down-to-the-ground. So as we drove through the night to get here we real­ised this new place had much to live up to.

We spent five lovely days wan­der­ing around the won­der­fully cur­va­ceous but nar­row coastal roads and inlets in our 2 berth abode. There are plenty of remote loc­a­tions com­plete with DOC (Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion) camp­sites to explore, which we did des­pite not being allowed on unsealed roads. Our jour­ney took us from Thames up the West coast to Colville, across the unsealed road to Waikawau Bay and then back down the East coast via Hahei, Hot Water Beach and Waihi to the Bay of Plenty.

Driv­ing our 6.6m camper­van over the moun­tain­ous pass between Colville and Waikawau Bay was unnerv­ing to say the least due to the amal­gam­a­tion of road qual­ity, nar­row­ness and steep­ness. How­ever this was a high­light of our trip due to there feel­ing of isol­a­tion and remote­ness. As rain beat down on us over night we lay awake won­der­ing if we would make it out of this soggy DOC 250 pitch camp­ing field. We inched off our pitch in the morn­ing all the while expect­ing to get stuck and yet we made it.  Our new found hap­pi­ness van­ished around the first corner — as we attemp­ted a manœuvre around a vehicle on the track our back wheels span cre­at­ing a fine spray of mud cas­caded behind us. We were stuck! Embar­rass­ingly we asked for help from the burly Maori owner who pulled us out in 5, with typ­ical Kiwi ease. Relieved we returned over the moun­tain pass and gladly joined the sealed roads again! 

We trav­elled south to Hahei, our des­tin­a­tion of choice for a spot of romance, to enjoy our wed­ding anniversary. It was a lux­ury to debunked from the camper­van and check-in to ‘The Church’ accom­mod­a­tion. The private huts with en-suite bath­rooms were delight­ful and a lux­uri­ous in com­par­ison to foam mat­tresses on top of a camper­van table! The huts were thought­fully appoin­ted although the shower was a little small for two and had no light! We were made very wel­come by the delight­ful staff. Here we indulged ourselves with a candlelit din­ner at ‘The Church Res­taur­ant’ in the con­ver­ted church build­ing. The food was deli­cious and the local wine equally so.

Walk­ing to Cathed­ral Cove on our anniversary there was a beau­ti­ful view across the blue ocean which buf­feted against the sur­round­ing islands with a white foam. My mind began to unwind just that little bit more. Cathed­ral Cove is fab­ulous. The clear sun­lit water ebbs and flows under the arch with each wave smooth­ing the sand in its path. I enjoyed pad­dling my feet in the not so warm water and admir­ing the sculp­ture it had cre­ated. The small neigh­bour­ing beach has lovely clean sand and some amaz­ing rock form­a­tions both on and off the beach. At the end there is a high water­fall that must be a delight in sum­mer. Vis­it­ing this area is a must.

Close by is the won­der that is Hot Water Beach where really hot water bubbles up under the sur­face of the sand and you can chal­lenge your­self with dig­ging a pool. As we dis­covered this is quite a chal­lenge in Spring as the tide keeps wash­ing any semb­lance of a pool wall away. Amaz­ing fun though.

Hot Water Beach with it’s bub­bling sand and J try­ing to keep the per­fect pool from the end­less tide

I’m not really in favour of the whole Hol­i­day Park exper­i­ence myself, but it seems to be a neces­sary evil when camper­van­ing around New Zea­l­and. How­ever, there is an excep­tion at Waihi Beach Top 10 Hol­i­day Park. there was all the stand­ard facil­it­ies in pristine con­di­tion but the high­lights were all the extras; includ­ing spa, pool, gym, waters­lide, barbe­que, sun­deck with para­sols and sun-loungers and beau­ti­ful gar­dens. We awoke there to glor­i­ous sun­shine so I graced myself with a dip in the out­door spa and enjoyed my usual 50 lengths in the pool. What a truly won­der­ful way to wake up.

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