Giant Sand Dunes - Te Paki Sand Dunes

Welcome Back!

We are now in December 2024, and I am full of energy to be up to date until my end in Sydney. At the beginning of December, thanks to a few colleagues who took over some of my shifts and my boss's flexibility, I had a total of 9 days off in Hobbiton. Before it was confirmed that I would get 9 days off, I had already booked a diving day to the Poor Knights in New Zealand. I scheduled my free days around this diving day. It is a solid 5-hour drive from Cambridge to Tutukaka - the place from where the boat sets sail - so I needed a few days to make this diving day possible and travel north. I also planned these days generally in a way that I could explore the northern part of the North Island a bit.

So I grabbed Fridolin, who, by the way, I had also upgraded from a blue camping sticker to a green camping sticker at this time, and slowly cruised north. My destination: Cape Reinga - the northernmost point of New Zealand.

One of my favorite stories from Hobbiton was the wonderful coincidence that I actually had 2 people from Reutte on my tour, and we knew each other through 3 connections. The world is so small, and the chance that these two were in Hobbiton at exactly this time and also on my tour is just too small. But after about 20 minutes into the tour, Marco asked me where I was from in Austria, and after a bit of back and forth, we found out that both of them were also from Reutte. The scream I let out at that moment on set led to questions in the staff room after the tour, but I just found it too funny. And it was with these two that I arranged to meet in the north, and we checked out the Giant Sand Dunes, or the Te Paki Sand Dunes, and raced down the slopes on boogie boards.

What a fun time and what a view, as from the dunes we could see the sea, the beach, and also the inland. It felt surreal to stand on these dunes without actually being in the desert.

After we raced down the dunes, we talked for quite a while, and I recommended a few other activities to the two of them before they unfortunately had to head back south. I drove in the opposite direction and set up camp for 2 nights at the northernmost campground in New Zealand.

More about that in the next post.
Your Britta