Whangarei, Sand surfing, and 90 Mile Beach
Okay, so from Rotorua, we drove up to Auckland, not 20km from Auckland we had a blow out and had to pull to the side of the road. It really chewed up the side fender but not too bad. The car’s been through a lot the last couple of days. We changed to the spare tire on the side of the road and then drove to an automotive place and bought a used tire for $55.
From there, we went to Aloe Tree hostel so that I could put up a sign for the car in case someone wanted to buy it. Then we checked out this Backpacker’s Car Park which runs everyday instead of just weekends.
Costs $65 for three days to sell your car. So we registered for that so we’d have a spot when we returned and then got back on the road.
We decided not to seperate because Leigh didn’t want to be without a car and I didn’t want to risk losing more money on it. So we drove up to the Northland to Whangarei, pronounce Fungerae.
While in Whangarei, we got a chance to check the oil again and found that there was none in the tank. Yikes! So we filled it up with the last of the bottle we had and then went to get some more just in case.
We stopped at a hostel which was not that great, then woke up and went up to 90 mile beach the next morning. It’s called 90 Mile Beach but it’s really only 96km (60 miles) long. It’s cool though, you can drive up and down it if you want. We drove onto it and I went swimming a bit and collected shells. The waves were nice and the water was not warm, but not cold either.
We drove from there up further all the way to the tip top of New Zealand at Cape Rienga. There’s a nice lighthouse there and I watched the sunset and took some pictures. I met some people up there who were also watching the sunset and on the way out, told them if they saw a car on the side of the road, please stop cause that’s us.
To get to Cape Rienga, we had to cross 20km of gravel road which is not so good for the car, plus we thought there was a hostel there cause that’s what the book said, but even though it called it the Cape Rienga hostel it actually was south of there and we had to go all the way back down the gravel road.
They, of whose names I later learned were Satu (Finland), Aires (Sweden), Rachel (Dunedin, NZ), and Bobbie (Oz), told me about this place they were staying called MArty’s Pack and Paddle. $10 for basic bed and bathroom, plus a fish dinner.
So we followed them back down in the dark and came to this tiny house in the middle of sheep paddocks. He wasn’t there cause he was out fishing, but they said he’d def let us stay there so we waited and he came back with some big snapper. He fried those up and they were sooo good, just crispy enough. We were then shown our accomodations, a delapadated trailer van out back. It was quite funny. It had beds, so that’s all that mattered.
In the morning, we all got up and rented some sandboards from Marty, then we (the whole 6 of us) went up to Te Paki sand dunes, that’s right there’s sand dunes, and they were huge too. We walked up to the top and then slid down on the boards. You got goin pretty fast too! On the other side of the dune, there was a tiny stream and the best run I had was shooting down that dune, hitting the bump, then going straight down and across the stream. Aaahh, sweet exhileration.
We did that for about 2 hours before we got too tired to walk up the thing again. We returned the boards to Marty’s and then parted from the other group going down to 90 mile beach again for a swim. We took another path down another freakin long gravel road (I hate them) and onto the beach.
We decided that it might be better to just go down the beach rather then hit that gravel again. On the way down though, we hit some very soft sand and the car got stuck. We tried to get it out to no avail. We even got some help from this huge german dude and an irish couple, but the more we tried, the deeper the car sank and it actually got to the point where the car was being held up from underneath by the sand. So we had to dig out the entire front of the car. Then the irish girl found a flipper and we used that as a base and jacked the car up off the ground and continued to dig sand from underneath it and laid down some branches under the tires for texture. We took the jack off and started her up and everyone gave a big push and at first it still didn’t budge, but finally it moved, and we pushed harder and finally, Mo was free!
Leigh was driving and started to stop, but we shouted, “Keep driving!” I wanted her to get the car completely off the sand before she stopped. The others helped me carry the stuff we had to take out of the trunk back to the car which was extremely nice of them.
Poor car.It took us a little under 2 hours to get that car out. Phew. We then drove back to Whangarei, took showers and ate dinner. I just reserved a spot to go diving tomorrow in the Poor Knight islands, one of Jacque Costuea’s top ten diving spots in the world! Whew, got through all that