Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

After Shelby and Logan headed off to explore the South Island, Eric and I had a little over a week to kill before we flew out of the country for a short trip to Fiji. We decided to keep exploring areas we hadn’t seen yet and come up the eastern side of the North Island. This route would take us through some kind of random stops with no particular big name destinations before taking us back towards Auckland. One of these random spots that we decided to go for was Castle Point. Castle Point was roughly 2 hours out of our way, but we weren’t really on a schedule, so we thought why not– we saw it on our travel map apps and decided it looked cool enough for us to check out! I am so glad we did, because it was truly incredible.

Luckily, Castle Point features a freedom camping spot right by the beach, so we could drive out and stay the night, rather than do a ton of driving in one day. The freedom camp site wasn’t anything special, it was just a parking lot at the top of the hill, but it had everything we needed, so we couldn’t complain too much. It also had stunning views of the lighthouse itself, which was definitely a perk. From the moment we arrived we noticed that it was consistently incredibly windy, but the carpark had a little protection from the wind via the dunes, so all in all, we were very happy with it.

We got there in the late afternoon, and the weather wasn’t great, so we just walked around the nearby beach, and researched the hikes that we wanted to do the following day. There was Castle Rock, which looked like a brutal climb, and of course, the Castle Point Lighthouse. We decided we would do both of these the next day. As the sun began to set, we noticed that there were lights around the lighthouse, that actually lit up the lighthouse and changed colors throughout the night. It was very pretty, and fun to see. It also wasn’t too bright, so the lighthouse backlit with the stars above was a really pretty scene.

The next morning we were greeted with an absolutely brilliant sunrise. It was what I like to call a cotton candy sunrise, where the sky looked so blue and there were bright pink, purple, and orange clouds all around. That all being said, it was still incredibly windy. The weather was a little nicer though, aside from the wind, so we still wanted to get our hikes done.

After breakfast, we went to hike Castle Rock. Castle rock is a huge limestone rock located across from the lighthouse on Castlepoint beach. It’s pretty cool, because it is the remnant of a coral reef that is over 150 million years old, and was uplifted by the tectonic and volcanic movement all around New Zealand. It has a unique shape, and was a pretty steep climb. As you might’ve guessed, it was even windier up there, but the views were amazing, and it was really scenic. In typical New Zealand fashion, we were greeted with views of gorgeous pasture land overlooking steep cliffs and an incredibly blue ocean. We made sure not to blow off the cliff and down the 531′ (162m) drop to the ocean. This hike was tough but well worth it for the views, if we were ever to go back, we might even work up the motivation to do this hike nice and early to catch the sunrise over the lighthouse.

After finishing up Castle Rock, we decided to go check out the Castle Point Lighthouse. The walk leads up and around the lighthouse, as well as along the cliffs nearby. Much like Castle Rock, the cliff that the lighthouse is on was once an old coral reef, and you could see all of the fossils and old coral in the rock, which was super cool. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed in the lighthouse, but we were still able to get a good view of the ocean, beaches, and surrounding cliffs. While we were checking out the lighthouse, we learned that during low tide*, there is actually a cave underneath that you can go in. Unfortunately for us, the tide was already coming back in, but we made the decision to stay another night and check out the cave the next day. This meant another night of checking out the cool lighthouse lights/stars and another morning of fighting the wind for a sunrise view.

*The realization that we needed to wait for low tide happened after roughly 30 minutes of aimlessly walking around looking for said cave. We managed to find a map online that roughly showed where to access the cave.

The next morning, we were treated to another great sunrise and it may have been even windier, although, we may have been imagining it by this point. Once low tide approached, we set out to find our cave (we initially forgot our headlamps, shocker, and had to turn back to go get them). The cave is located on the west side of the lighthouse peninsula, almost directly below the lighthouse. Accessing this meant we had to hike and scramble over some rocks at the base of the old reef where the high tide line would be. As we scrambled our way, we inevitably scared a few fur seals out of their naps, and had to slip by a few who didn’t seem too pleased with our little adventure. We felt bad about this, but it was either that or turn around… We got to the mouth of the cave and actually scared a little fur seal into the cave, which made us extra cautious to enter the cave.

As we slowly climbed up into the cave, we saw that the far end was open to the ocean, so the little fur seal wasn’t trapped in there waiting to scream at us, he just decided to swim out the back way. Knowing this, we were able to explore the cave more freely and really enjoy it.

The cave, much like all of Castle Point, is limestone, and part of the old coral reef from millions of years ago.* The cave under Castle Point was HUGE. While it isn’t technically the largest cave we’ve been in in NZ (that title goes to Waipu Caves), the room we were in was much more cavernous than anything we’ve been in since Alabama (as much as you might not believe it, Alabama has some of the best caves in the states, and it is the only place other than NZ with glowworms). Not only was the cavern huge, the waves were crashing from the back entrance and echoing off everything, making for a pretty unbelievable, if not a little scary, experience.

*Eric wanted to add that most caves are limestone because limestone likes to dissolve easily in any kind of acidic water.

While exploring the cave, we found numerous tide pools that had all sorts of fun critters in them. We found a bunch of crabs (all small, not worth eating sadly), starfish, regular fish, and even some tiny shrimp. This was my favorite part of Castle Point, while Eric liked all the rock stuff, I preferred the many different critters. It was pretty crazy to think that above this massive cavern, they built a lighthouse. And within this massive cavern, which has a lighthouse above it, more rocks seem to have fallen somewhat recently*. We explored the cave for roughly an hour before we decided it was time to get back before the tide came in and forced us to swim back. The hike back was pretty uneventful, except for having to again dodge a couple fur seals…sorry guys.

*Eric also wanted to say this means recently from a Geologic standpoint, meaning probably in last few hundred years.

Castle Point was by no means a spot we had planned to go, but we are both glad that we looked into it and decided to check it out. It may be one of our favorite little side quests we’ve hit while here in New Zealand.