On top of New Zealand at Cape Reinga

Tuesday 14th May, 2013

Today was another early start as we needed to travel from Mangonui to Kaitaia (30 minutes away) by 0830 to join Harrison’s Cape Runner for a day out to Cape Reinga/Te Rerenga Wairua the not-quite-northern-most point of New Zealand (that distinction belongs to Surville Cliffs 30 miles east of the Cape).

We had originally planned to drive ourselves up to the Cape and whilst doing all of this in the day under our own steam was definitely doable it would have meant missing out 90 mile beach, a stretch of New Zealand coastline that is not in fact 90 miles long but is a state highway in its own right (our car hire insurance was explicit about not driving on sand). So instead we plumped for this very reasonably priced ($50 pp) trip.

The first stop of the day was just down the road from the coach depot at the Ancient Kauri Kingdom. The Kauri is native to New Zealand and grows to breathtaking heights and circumferences. Unfortunately it takes a very, very, very long time (thousands of years) to grow to those dimensions, a detail lost on the sailors who saw perfect timber for masts and sadly ignored by the various people over the subsequent years who favoured the high quality lumber over preserving the trees.

It’s now illegal to cut down living Kauri but stumps are still being recovered from swamps and this allows a trade in Kauri products to continue. As you might guess, beautifully unique souvenirs that might be as much as 45,000 years old don’t come cheap so we had to make do with looking rather than buying (not that we would have anywhere to put a staircase inside a tree trunk anyway!

On our way to the Cape, Simon, the driver kept us entertained with a wonderful patter and a rich history of different places along the way. We stopped a few times: a scenic reserve, a white sandy beach (for lunch) and then for ginormous ice creams before reaching the Cape at about 1330.

In Maori Te Rerenga Wairua means leaping-off place of spirits and Reinga means underworld which is in keeping with the mythology about this place. It is Maori belief that the spirits of the dead travel to Cape Reinga and from there depart to return to Hawaiki (the ancestral homeland) using the Te Ara Wairua, the ‘Spirits’ pathway’. This means you can only walk as far as the lighthouse, not to the shore but from there you can see an absolutely incredible thing – the meeting of the Tasman Sea with the Pacific Ocean. The ‘tidal race’ (where two seas clash) leads to spectacular whirlpools.

After leaving the Cape we drove down to 90 mile beach via some sand dunes where we got to do some tobogganing (something else we wouldn’t have done if we’d done the trip under our own steam).

The drive down to the beach is spectacular and it is easy to see why people are discouraged from driving on it themselves. There is only a sliver of sand firm enough to be safe and you have to be able to ‘read’ the beach. The tide can also turn quickly and so there’s a possibility you could get stuck if you weren’t being too careful. After leaving the beach we were pretty relaxed and snoozed all the way back to Kaitaia.

We picked up the car and headed for the Opononi Lighthouse Motel where another of those ‘most incredible sights’ was in store. The drive itself had been very picturesque and had included a ferry cross as the sun was beginning to set. As we arrived in Opononi the sun had set and the sky was the most magnificent colour – no photo could do it justice.