Day 3 in Northland - a waterfall and a long drive

Hello everyone,

The last few days, Lina and I have been spending time at campsites without any reception, which is why I am uploading a batch of posts today.

First, I would like to talk about yesterday's (October 20) day. After Lina and I woke up at our 'luxury campsite' (which had a kitchen, hot showers, and a TV lounge), we had breakfast in bed in typical fashion. Then we headed to the nice warm showers and enjoyed them thoroughly. After that, we rearranged the car and had a nice warm cup of tea with honey, as Lina has a cold and I also have a scratchy throat. At exactly 10 o'clock, we set off to the nearby town of Pahia and gathered information about our options. We wanted to go for a walk before embarking on the long journey to the northernmost point of New Zealand. The 5km long hiking trail to the Haruru Waterfalls appealed to us the most. After a good hour (around 1:15h), we arrived at the waterfalls. We took a break there and ate our bananas. Since the trail itself was nothing special, and the lady at the iSite suggested that we could also walk back through the town, we decided to make it a loop. However, we regretted this decision after a short time, as the trail did not lead through the town but along the highway back to the town. At least there was a pedestrian path most of the time, but we saw even less than on the way there and had to breathe in exhaust fumes the whole time. But oh well, at least we discovered a supermarket and a cheap gas station along the way. When we arrived back at the car after about 1 1/4 hours, we breathed a sigh of relief. But we took the opportunity and went straight to the gas station and supermarket. We spent most of the rest of the day in the car on the way to Cape Reinga, stopping at a beautiful lookout and then at a beach with toilets. About an hour before reaching our destination, we took a short break at a wood carving shop with a café and store. My personal highlight was the mighty tree in the middle of the store, which reminded me of a restaurant my grandparents once took me to where a restaurant was built around a tree. In the store, you could buy all sorts of things carved from Kauri wood. This wood is apparently highly valued, and the trees were almost extinct because so many of them were cut down. However, it was discovered some time ago that some of these forests were buried or flooded by a natural event, preserving the wood, and now people use this wood for carving. There were some very beautiful pieces, such as large fruit bowls or lovely wooden tables. After we had looked around there enough and stretched our legs, we continued to our campsite. This campsite is the northernmost campsite in New Zealand. It was a very nice and quite large campsite, located right by the sea in a bay. It was quite lively there, with many people with boats or fishing gear as our neighbors. After we rearranged and cooked and ate in the car for the night, we crawled into our bed very early and fell asleep quickly.

That's all from this day. In the next post, I will tell you about today's (October 21) day.

Until then,

Your Jessi