We reached the northern tip of the North Island in the middle of our last week. I have to say that I thought it would be warmer there than it really was. I suppose this was just wishful thinking on my part. But the sun was shining and we had some spectacular views of the northern most lighthouse in New Zealand and also of where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea. You can actually see where the two bodies of water meet because the conflicting currents produce quite a lot of surf in a seemingly random spot off the coast.
We had a good time in 'Northland', one of the highlights was the sand dunes at Te Paki:
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This is Jo standing at the top of a steep sand dune. It was quite hard work to climb up these things. You sort of had to make a run for it and hope that you didn't run out of momentum before you got to the top. |
Jo said that she thought I looked like Piglet in this photo that she took! I suppose I do a bit. It was actually quite hard to keep your balance and run as fast as you could at the same time.
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The 3 specks are me, Emma and Will, |
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 We had brilliant fun jumping off the sand dunes. Will was, by far, much more daring than the rest of us. He was doing flips and everything. By the time we got back to the car everyone had sand everywhere. I had sand crunching in my mouth for about half an hour afterwards, but it was worth it. |
| We also saw this brilliant sunset on Ninety Mile Beach, which turns out to only be about 60 (or so) miles long because they measured the distance using the time it took for a horse to travel the distance (this was way back when), in doing so they forgot that horses can't run as fast on sand as they can on solid ground, so they got the distance wrong, but the name stays the same. Regardless, it is still really impressive and goes for as far as the eye can see. |  |
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