The Great Kiwi Road Trip Day 7-9: Glenbrook - Kaitaia

​The Northland has been calling to us ever since we came to New Zealand in 2007. Now up and back I can honestly say it was worth the wait, and I am disappointed that this is likely the only time we will have to visit it while we are in New Zealand this time around. The Northland is, in parts, what I think New Zealand would have looked like before European settlement. The beaches are straight out of the Caribbean, and the culture is like nowhere else in New Zealand. It is a very Maori part of New Zealand, and      Above: ​Waipu Caves                                                                           most of the white people you see up here are tourists like ourselves.          
We only had four days in this area, and you really need at least twice that to truly experience all the variety this place has to offer. There was a lot of seeing, and not nearly as much doing as most would likely aim for. Such is life when travelling with three of your travel party under eight years of age. Had we more time, we would have camped for longer durations and gone on longer walks to truly experience all of the natural Northland beauty.
So the highlights then, driving North from Glenbrook, we took an Eastern detour to Waipu Caves, which are the largest non-commercial glow worm caves in New Zealand. Aside from the glow worm glory, the caves themselves are an interesting collection of stalagmites, and cavernous passages, with adventure beckoning crawl spaces. They were a bit busier than I had expected, but if you brave the back end of the cave you will pretty much have the place to yourself. I only managed to get stuck once, and after a brief moment of panic wedged at an awkward angle between a rock, a hard place and more rocks and a meter of water below, I realised that I was just going to have to get a bit mucky to get out. All the while hopefully keeping my camera functional.

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​The main aim of our Northland journey lay on the West coast though, so we crossed back over and after staying with friends of friends we edged northward. Cape Reinga was the goal, but along the way many scenic stops, a highlight being the tropical paradise Kai Iwi lakes. The attraction of these lakes is the golden sand, the turquoise water, and the idea that they are fresh water lakes, so no sticky salt residue. The first 70 meters of the lake is about 40cm deep and in the hot sun, the water can be likened to a comfortable bath. But then after 70m, the lake takes a steep dive and you ​ Above: Kai Iwi Lakes            can see a stark contrast in the colour of the water as the lake deepens rapidly allowing for more adventurous water sports. 

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From here we made our way up through Waipoua Forest Reserve, home of the famed Tane Mahuta, New Zealand’s largest Kauri tree. The scale of Kauri trees rival the redwoods of the West Coast of North America, and are an important aspect of Maori legend. We did several forest walks to get up close to these giants, as we ambled northward through some of the densest forest in New Zealand - surely this is the sights that greeted Captain Cook, and early Maori settlers hundreds of years ago. It was refreshing to see such large swathes of untouched, and now protected forest. (save for the highway cut through the middle of it all)  
Northward once more, toward the beautiful coastal drive of Opononi, which we were told has an excellent fish and chip shop. The one we found was fish, chips, and Indian curry (random) but the fish was the best in New Zealand, tender and butter battered full of flavour not just grease and batter like so many others. The roads up here are mostly coastal through charming sea-side towns, that tend to blur into one another. A refreshing change from dense winding forest roads we had just come through. After short ferry ride across the Waihou River, we camped just south of Kaitaia under a brilliant new moon sky, with the outer reaches of Northland in grasp for tomorrow.                                                                                     The Hartlens with Tane Mahuta "Lord of the Forest"  

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Opononi Sunset