Kia ora! Hello!

Let me set the scene for you on this one. Now if you are from Aotearoa you will know that our Summer season can be very hit and miss, but this year has probably been one of the wettest Summers yet. There has been a cyclone, lots of flooding, roads demolished, houses ruined and unfortunately due to all of this - lives lost.

At this point in my life I had crossed the Auckland Harbour bridge only once in my lifetime and really wanted to explore Northland so we chose to do it over our New Year break off.

We drove up to Kerikeri to work from one of our offices for the remaining 3 days that week after the Christmas public holidays. Whilst we were up there we stayed in a nearby motel and after work we went and checked out the Whangarei Falls, Rainbow Falls (Waianiwaniwa) and the Stone Store.

After we finished work on the Friday we drove further north and stayed near the entrance to the well known Ninety Mile Beach (which is not in fact, 90miles!) and camped for a couple nights. Staying here meant we were in a good middle point to get to other sites. After searching online for a good beach we located one that was just as clear and beautiful as in the pictures - Rangiputa Beach. It was only warm enough to lay in the sun and read our books, eat some snacks and listen to some music. New Years Day we did a 4am wake up and drove all the way up to Cape Reinga for sunrise, which was a bucket list item for me due to the cultural significance to our people. We then spent some time down at Spirits Bay where we read some more (or in my case, slept for several hours), before we went to the Giant Sand Dunes. This was unreal! You would walk for ages and then suddenly only be surrounded by sand, making me feel like I was back in the desert in the UAE.

The following day we then took the tent down and headed to Paihia to came again for a further 3 nights. However this is where the fun starts. We managed to camp one night (cute spot in some orchards, however terribly ran and was not a great experience), visit the Waitinga grounds, Haruru Falls and do a drive out to see Tane Mahuta (in the Waipoua Kauri Forest) and Kai Iwi Lakes. On the drive back to Paihia there was a lot of severe weather warnings starting to take place and flooding already happening with the warning for campers to head home. The being said, we packed up the tent when we got back, squeezed everything in the car, put the seats back and slept there for the night - we had no faith in the tent against that weather.

Our next accomodation was in Rotorua where we were splashing out on a hotel after a week of camping, with the additional treats of an hour long massage, a manicure & a pedicure. But we still had one night to go before then. Considering our options, do we stay another night in the car or do we try get accomodation somewhere between here and there to shorten some driving days, is it best to leave incase Northland is cut off (which it did in the end)? We ended up finding a super cheap room in a hostel in Hamilton for the night so we figured we should head there given the weather was preventing us from heading to Russell.

So what was supposed to be a fun, relaxing holiday filled with camping, site seeing and lots of beach time ended up being a mixture of all types of accomodation and a lot less beach time than I anticipated. It was still a great time away with a lot of memories.

Haere rā! Goodbye!