Whangarei - Whangaruru

We bid our farewells to Eric and his wife and continued on our route up North. Not far from where we were staying was Tutukaka Harbour where Eric had mentioned there was a short walk that you could do to a lighthouse which was nice. You could only reach the lighthouse at low tide though but when we drove past, the signs looked good so we pulled up. It was another lovely sunny day and we strolled across the green grass and you could hear the birds. I am slightly concerned that Simon is becoming a twitcher as he has started taking hundreds of pictures of literally ever bird he sees! I have also recently learnt that when he was little he owned his very own pair of little binoculars and selection of bird books! To get to the lighthouse you have to walk across the causeway (hence the reason for low tide). If the tide was going out we would definitely be fine but if it was coming in then we would probably have gotten stuck and / or very wet. After much deliberation and then checking the tide times we decided not to risk it. I think that was the right decision as whilst we had been pondering whether to cross, the tide had already come up quite a bit.

After our failed attempt to see the lighthouse we continued on our way up along the Tutukaka Coast to Matapouri and stopped by Whale Bay. Here there was a fairly short walk from Whale Bay to Matapouri Bay and back again which we did to build up an appetite for lunch. For lunch we cooked up some scrambled eggs on toast and ate them along with a cup of tea on a picnic bench overlooking the sea. Such an amazing view!

Our stop for the evening was a place called The Farm, near Whangaruru which is a working dairy farm and sounded pretty cool. After lunch we made our way up there with a brief stop at a coffee shop for some delicious cake. The owners also had 2 enormous New Foundlands which were super cute! One even tried to get in our van when we were leaving and I would have quite happily stolen him but he was a little smelly!

When we arrived at The Farm it was not as cool as we had originally hoped. As I mentioned, it is a working dairy farm so they employ a few woofers (volunteers who work on the farm in return for food and board) and the woofers were really weird! One chap was from New Zealand and when I bumped into him in the kitchen and he found out I was from the UK, he repeatedly made comments about how I had come over here to ruin his beautiful country. He then proceeded to tell me about all of these beautiful spots in the North island that we could visit but he wasn't going to tell me where they were as they didn't want tourists there! Needless to say after that, me and Si stayed in the van as much as we could and made very quick strategic visits to the bathroom so as to avoid speaking to anyone!Read more