An early start this morning as we had a sizeable drive ahead of us, and knowing what we now know about the roads we knew it was going to take us some time. Plus the previous night had been gales and rain, and from the weather reports it was set to continue into today.
Setting off at 8am we started the journey south, and after a couple of hours (and a couple of wrong turns) we arrived on the southern banks of Hokianga harbour in the twin towns of Opononi and Omapere. The views here across the harbour to North Head and the towering sand dunes were spectacular.
We drove up to the Arai-Te-Uru reserve which was at the tip of the harbour looking out to see and stared back up the river, as a storm was moving in fast from the open sea we didn’t hang about too long!
Next stop was an hour south, at the Waipoua Kauri Forest, where we stopped to view a Kauri tree called Tane Mahuta by the Maori…’God of the forest’. At 51 metres high, with a girth of 13.8 metre we felt he deserved the title…as the oldest living Kauri tree at approx 2000 years old.
Back on the road again, and with the tree hugging out of our systems we drove the last stretch to our camp site for the night at Baylys Beach, a beach side town just south of Dargaville. After a short delay, with an interesting road block we checked into Baylys Beach Holiday Park and settled in for the night….or should we say…played at being big kids!
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