I am spending about 2 weeks to see the area north of Auckland right now. For one week I was traveling with Aelita, an Estonian-German girl from hamburg. We met in Auckland at a couchsurfing meeting and I offered her a ride up north. Since we had about the same ideas and plans, we spent most of the Northland trip together, picking up another girl in Paihia for a couple of days to go to Cape Reinga.
The first two nights we stayed at a very nice, heartily couple close to Whangarei – Couchsurfing. This will also be the place where I will spend Christmas.
Going up the east coast from Whangarei via Tutukaka coast to Russell, we saw really nice sillica-white beaches. We crossed the Bay of Islands the next day and went on to Kerikeri where we slept in the car another night (saving the money for a hostel or camping site).
After picking up Angela (also from Hamburg) in Paihia we made our way half way up to Cape Reinga. Sleeping at the beach with nothing more than our sleeping bags and without a tent was a cool experience. :-) – just had to make sure that we were not surprised by high tide ( – we weren’t :) )
Up north we did some sand boarding at the enormous huge dunes and saw the point where the Pacific Ocean merges with the Tasman sea. Just a little too late we could not go down Ninety Mile Beach because the high tide would have caught us.
The next day was beginning quite nice and we headed up Doubtless Bay to Maitai Bay – where it started raining….
Dicided to take the quick route back to Paihia to stay at a hostel there, enjoying a soft bed for the first time in 4 nights – and all those other german travelers. There seem to be at least twice as many Germans here than all other visitors put together – and almost as many as there are Kiwis………. Out of about 30 guests in the hostel, there were only 2 not being german…. And from what I hear it is the same everywhere around NZ.
