It stopped raining in the afternoon so we decided to go for a walk down to the beach. It was a short walk on a long beach. Ahipara is right at the most southerly end of Ninety Mile Beach and the northern end of Shipwreck Beach and Shipwreck Bay. It was very overcast so we did not get any type of view of either beach. It was also our first look at the Tasman Sea.
The wind was really blowing and it looked like it was going to start raining again so we headed back to the campervan and called it a night. We had an early morning as our bus tour starts at 8:30AM.
Thursday morning came early and it was still lightly raining, sprinkling really. This morning we are taking a bus tour that takes us up to Cape Reinga which is one of the most northerly points of New Zealand. The bus picked up at 8:30AM and after a couple of more stops for other passengers and we were ready to go. Well almost, we had one more stop at the post office to pick up the mail for the small towns up north. It turns out we are on a multi-purpose tour bus.
The first part of the trip is pretty unique as we travel the first 45 miles on Ninety Mile Beach and I do mean on the beach. I have still not been able to find out why Ninety Mile Beach is called Ninety Mile Beach. The logical assumption would be that it is 90 miles long. Wrong, it is only 52 miles long. The answer I get when I ask the question is that nobody really knows how it got its name.
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| Our First Venture onto the Beach |
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| Another Beach Buggy |
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| Ninety Mile Beach |
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| Ninety Mile Beach |
I did notice how clean the beach was from the time we drove on to it until we left it. No garbage, no drift wood, to rocks, nothing. It was pristine.
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| A very Pristine Ninety Mile Beach |
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| Almost looks eerie |
Shortly before we got off the beach we did come upon a wild horse standing in the dunes. There is a herd of wild horses that roam over a portion of the tip of the island. Currently they are about 300 in numbers.
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When it was time to leave the beach we headed up a fresh water stream until we came to a bunch of sand dunes.
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| Our Escape Route from the Beach |
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| Took this picture from inside the Bus |
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| Sands Dunes on Ninety Mile Beach |
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| Sanding Boarding Mecca |
At which point the bus stopped and we all got a chance to go sand boarding. It is the same as snowboarding except you slide down a sand dune. Kathy was the first to go and then I followed.
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| Wheeeeeeeee |
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| I think I am going to hurt tomorrow |
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| Nothing to it. |
We finished sand boarding, continued up the creek until we hit the highway and turned north for Cape Reinga. Just prior to reaching Cape Reinga we stopped at Tapotupotu Bay for lunch. It is a quaint little bay and quite picturesque. After lunch we went for a short walk and took a few pictures.
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| Tapotupotu Beach and Pacific Ocean |
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| Beach at Tapotupotu Bay |
Once lunch was finished we continued to Cape Reinga where we had about 45 minutes to wander around. It was a good thing as the walk down the lighthouse was all downhill, which made the return trip a whole different matter.
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| Lighthouse at Cape Reinga |
There are two very interesting aspects to the cape. The first is that this is where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet. Today was not a good day to see the collision between the two waters as we could only see whirlpools which indicated where they met. We were told that at times the waters will come together and create a wall of water two feet high. That would be something to see.
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| The Meeting of the Waters |
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| The Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean Collide |
The other is the Maori legend. It states that the name of the cape comes from the Maori word 'Reinga', meaning the 'Underworld'. Another Maori name is 'Te Rerenga Wairua', meaning the leaping-off place of spirits. Both refer to the Maori belief that the cape is the point where the spirits of the dead enter the underworld.
According to mythology, the spirits of the dead travelled to Cape Reinga on their journey to the afterlife by leaping off the headland. They then climbed the roots of the 800 year old tree and descended to the underworld to return to their traditional homeland of Hawaiiki-a-nui, using the Te Ara Wairua, the 'Spirits' pathway'. At Cape Reinga they depart the mainland. They turn briefly at the Three Kings Islands for one last look back towards the land before continuing on their journey
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| Head Land and 800 year old tree. |
The rest of the landscape on and near the cape was also very surreal.
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| Lighthouse on Cape Reinga |
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| View of Tapotupotu Bay from Cape Reinga |
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| Unknown Beach at Cape Reinga |
We left the cape and as I was enjoying the scenery I realized that it was real nice just doing that. It is very hard to really spend any time looking around when you are driving as the roads are extremely narrow and very curvy.
I was not able to take many pictures out of the bus and there were a few shots I wished we could have stopped for. We did stop for a very brief time at Paua Station, a large ranch to take pictures. It gave us a few of the brilliantly white sand of Kokota Sandspit which is at the southern head of Parengarenga Harbour. The sand dunes sand spit has provided New Zealand a source of high purity silica sand for glassmaking.
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| Parengarenga Harbor |
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| Kokota Sandspit |
We had one last stop before the tour ended at that was at Gum Diggers Park and Ancient Buried Kauri Forest. The information and history of both the Kauri Tree and the Gum Digger is long and involved, too long and involved to even summarize it. One interesting point I did learn is that Kauri Tree Sap or gum, when fossilized is more commonly referred to as Amber.
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| Fossilized Kauri Gum |
It was late in the afternoon when we left the park and headed for Ahipara. When we got back to the park, we had a quick supper and called it a night. It was a long but very rewarding day.
How 90-mile Beach got its name: One story is that people on horseback can travel about 30 miles per day, and as it took three days to traverse that beach, it must have been 90 miles. However, due to the sand slowing things down, the group only traveled only the 62 miles of the beach in the three days - or perhaps 66 miles.
ReplyDeleteHowever 90-mile Beach stuck and is as we know it today.
JC Orewa, NZ
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