Cape Reinga

We woke to the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and to the most incredible view over the sea. This place is amazing! After breakfast we had a walk along the beach before making our way to Cape Reinga, the most northerly point on New Zealand. Simon was also going to let me drive the van today so I was extra excited.

Cape Reinga is a particularly special place for Māori people ad they consider this the place that their soul comes when they die before it departs to the spirit world. When we arrived we parked up and walked down to the Lighthouse which sits on the end of the peninsula. Here the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Sea and you can see the wave crash together which is pretty cool. To the right of the lighthouse we could see an 800 year old pohutukawa tree of which the Māori people believe the souls slide down its roots. It was an amazing place and great to see out over the 'end of the world'. As Cape Reinga is a sacred site you are not allowed to eat or drink there so we started heading back South and stopped off at Tapotupoto by the beach for lunch.

We then continued the long journey back down South. You get such amazing views when you are driving around New Zealand that you really don't mind the long drives. To break the journey up we were spending the night near Opononi in a very cheap campsite. Due to a rather long stop at Mc Donalds to steal their wifi so we could update the blog (as we hadn't updated anything since Fiji) we arrived at the camping spot in the dark. We were however greeted by a very friendly (and possibly drunk) Ozzie called Nash. He helped us park the van as people had been getting stuck and then gave us some fish (I have no idea what kind) that he caught that day which was very sweet. Simon was extremely pleased as it added some meat to what would have otherwise been a veggie dinner of pasta and pesto.

When clearing up from dinner disaster struck when we discovered that the sink wasn't draining! After an hour of moving the van and taking everything apart we gave up and went to sleep, deciding to call the rental company in the morning.Read more