Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

The Cape

While we were WWOOFing, we wanted to spend our days off traveling to the northernmost point of New Zealand, Cape Reinga. It’s a long drive up the northern peninsula all the way to the top of New Zealand. Once you’re there, there is a short little trail to a beautiful lighthouse.

On our way up to this lighthouse, we stopped a couple of times to see the infamous 90-mile beach. This is a very long beach along the western side of the cape, and you are able to drive all the way up and down it. With our current track record with driving on beaches, we chose to not drive on this beach and just walk out and see the beach, and others driving along it. The high tide also gets very high at this beach, and there are signs everywhere with photos of cars and vans being lost to the sea. We both agreed that if we come back, maybe we’ll rent some four wheelers or a side by side and experience driving on the beach.

Near here, there are Giant Sane Dunes, known as the Te Paki Sand Dunes. They reminded us a lot of the Sand Dune National Park in Colorado, and we were excited to check them out! It was so fun to see people hiking all the way up to the top of the sand dunes with their sand boards, and sledding down almost alarmingly fast.

From there, we travelled to the Spirits Bay (Piwhane). According to Māori legend, this Bay is where their dead would gather to depart from this world into the afterlife. There was a long and kind of rough gravel road leading to this Bay, and we were a little nervous to see if it would be worth it or not. It most definitely way. This was a stunning Bay, and to this day, probably one of both Eric and my favorite beaches that we have seen so far. There was a river flowing into the bay, and there were wild horses up on the mountains surrounding. There were even a couple of foals hanging out with the herd, which was just so cool for us both to see. Much like the United States, the horses here are feral and invasive… but it is still very cool to see them while we travel.

That night, we ended up camping at Matai Campsite, which was a nice little campsite south east of The Cape, and one of the few campsites in the area that was covered with our DOC pass. Not only was it a beautiful campsite, but something else pretty magical happened while we were there… we got to see the southern lights!! I’m sure many of you are well aware of the solar storm that happened a few weeks ago, and that the northern lights, for my US friends, were visible all the way down in Alabama! This was also affecting the Southern Lights, or Aurora Australis, and we were lucky enough to get to see them.

We actually almost missed them, but luckily Eric was outside locking the van up for the night, when he asked my to come outside because there was a strange red light in the sky. The lights were similar to that of light pollution over a city far away, but they were moving. After a few seconds we determined it was the southern lights and tracked across the campsite in the dark to a hill to get a better view. I was very surprised by the color, but they were so cool to see. Seeing the Southern Lights was on our New Zealand bucket list, but we definitely did not expect to see them so soon, or so far north.

The next morning, we woke up early and watched a beautiful sunrise over the beach while we drank our morning coffee. I think I speak for Eric as well when I say Matai is a campsite and night that neither one of us will forget.

We continued back down the east coast, stopping in at the many beaches and towns along the way. This area is known as the Bay of Islands, and there are over 144 islands just along this little area. While we were on a pier at one of our stops, a local told us that there was a short hike nearby where we could get a great view of the surrounding area. This hike was up to a giant rock, that you are able to climb up onto the top of. After scrambling up, we were treated to a beautiful 360 degree view of the bay. The hike was fairly short, very steep, and oh so worth it.

We continued to stop in at every little town and beach that we came upon as we headed back to Kaikohe, where we were staying for the week.

Unfortunately, somewhere along our travels I lost my camera SD card… so a lot of the photos from this trip were lost. We will hopefully get to visit again, and I will hopefully have the opportunity to take more pictures of all of the stunning landscapes and animals up in the cape.