Bay of Islands and Cape Reinga

On Friday, May 5th, I went to Paihia in the Bay of Islands with two other au pairs. It is located north of Auckland and it was the first time for me to travel north instead of south. Since the journey there is quite long, we left at noon and stopped along the way to see some sights. We briefly stopped at a fence made of flip flops and walked into a glowworm cave. The latter was quite creepy and unfortunately we didn't see many glowworms, but it was a nice change from driving. In the evening, we arrived at our incredible hostel - we had booked a dorm room for eight people, but there were only three of us in a room for four and one of the mattresses was even a double mattress. Additionally, the hostel had a pool and a hot tub - all for a very affordable price.
In the evening, we didn't do much except cooking and eating. And since we wanted to head towards Cape Reinga early the next day, we went to bed early.
On Saturday morning, we continued our journey north. It took another three hours until we reached the top, but the drive was absolutely worth it. When we reached the top, we walked a bit and simply admired the beautiful view. You could really see how the two seas (Tasman Sea and South Pacific) met. They even had different colors, as the sky over the South Pacific was rather cloudy and the sky over the Tasman Sea was clear - it looked truly incredible. Additionally, Cape Reinga had something magical about it. According to Maori beliefs, Cape Reinga is the place where the souls of the dead come together at sunset. It's kind of spooky, but also truly magical :-D
After a few hours, we drove back towards the south and towards 90 Mile Beach (which is actually only 55 miles long). There, you can go sandboarding - sliding down sand dunes on a surfboard. We had two surfboards with us, but they turned out to be not really suitable for sandboarding. So, we rented a board and made our way up the dunes - which was incredibly exhausting in the deep sand, as we kept sinking deep with our feet. From the top, we could see the ocean, a river, desert, and a forest - basically everything except snow. Then we met two nice Kiwis who go sandboarding regularly and they lent us their boards, so we all had one. The first time, we were quite scared to slide down because it looked pretty steep. But once we got over our fear, it was simply incredible and so much fun!! :-) The only downside was that we had to climb back up every time - it gave us quite a muscle ache the next day, but it was definitely worth it.

After sandboarding, we drove back to our hostel and it was already evening when we finally arrived. On the way, we stopped in Kerikeri to grab something to eat. At the hostel, we put on our bikinis and sat in the hot tub with a delicious cider to end the evening.

The next morning, Luzia and I took the ferry to Russell while Caro spontaneously did a skydive. The weather was fantastic, we were really lucky! Russell is a pretty small but very beautiful and old town, which used to be the capital of New Zealand. We walked to a viewpoint (Tapeka Point), which was quite exhausting. Luckily, a kind woman stopped her car on the way back and gave us a ride :-) When we reached the bottom again, we walked around a bit and then sat down in a café at the harbor where we had (not very tasty) hot chocolate. Afterward, we took the ferry back to Paihia to pick up Caro after her skydive (which, by the way, was the first beach landing done by the Skydive - Bay of Islands team).
Around noon, we started making our way back to Auckland. On the way, we stopped at the famous Hundertwasser Toilets in Kawakawa, where he is actually buried.
We had planned to visit the beautiful Mermaid Pools on the way back, but you can only get there when it's low tide. Unfortunately, we were running late, so we wouldn't have been able to reach the Mermaid Pools without getting wet. And since it was already quite cold and we didn't want to continue driving wet, we decided to skip it.
After that, we stopped at the Whangarei Falls - a very beautiful, 26-meter-high waterfall. Above the basin, there was a slackline, but unfortunately, we had to continue and couldn't see if anyone actually walked on it. If they did, it would have been quite dangerous.
In the evening, we arrived in Auckland, had a pizza, and then went home.
Overall, it was a really beautiful weekend up in Northland! :-)