Date: 31st March – 3rd April 2018
Trampers: Timothy Gray, Ngaire Metcalf, Daniel Graham, Stefanie Payne, Tiina Mei, Lina Grisli, Evgeniia Golovina, Thong Nee Ang
Author: Timothy Gray
The Te Paki Coastal Track runs around the very top of the North Island, past Cape Reinga and Cape Maria van Diemen to form a lovely 4 day excursion passing through lovely beaches, subtropical bush, and sand dunes.
We started out early in the morning on
Easter Saturday, and before we knew it we were up near Whangarei (‘the Whangas’, as the locals call it).
Unfortunately, our journey was made a little longer with the news that there was a fatal police shooting on State
Highway 1 north of Auckland. Aside from making us question whether
New Zealand had secretly been annexed by the United States in the middle of the night, this added quite a bit of a delay to an already very long
(6-7 hour!) car ride. Our bums sure got a lot of exercise from sitting down on car seats on this trip.
We were able to break up the trip on the way up by going to visit some lovely glow worm caves!
The Waipu Caves, near Whangarei, are rather magnificent even if you have seen glow worms
before. Turning our headtorches off, we were able to see whole galaxies of these little worms up on the ceiling, which is quite the sight to behold.
Finally reaching the campsite near the very top of the North Island later that evening, we set up our tents and got to eating our dinner. The weather had decided to be very hot this Easter, which was somewhat unfortunate for those of us participating in the competition for who could keep their chocolate Easter bunny intact the longest.
The beach we walked along the next day seemed to go on forever, and with the sun beating down on us and the sand reflecting the light back up at us, it was feeling like a desert. Our efforts were well rewarded by a lovely swim at the end though! A little further walking around the coast led to more beach, which then gave way to a little bit of an uphill where we continued along the coast via a track through some lush subtropical bush. When descending this ridge, there was a little bit of a mishap where we briefly lost the trail and went through a bit of gorse… I extended my deepest apologies to the group for the suffering that I caused them, but to this day I’m not sure that they’ve actually forgiven me.
Going a bit further on from a large campsite where hundreds of people in their huge tents and campervans were staying, we found a nice spot to camp on the beach. This choice was controversial when the tide came in threatening to wash away our tents. Once I’d got into bed though I couldn’t be bothered moving our tent, but we managed to survive the high tide in the night, and got some good rest for climbing up to Cape Reinga in the morning.
Cape Reinga is rather nice, despite being a bit touristy. It’s hard to blame the tourists for making the long trip here though, it’s a lot of fun taking photos by the famous lighthouse and sign! The panoramic views of the ocean are well worth it too.
The walk from Cape Reinga to Cape Maria van Diemen also took us along a very long beach section. This walk was interrupted by a rather interesting event in which the tide was too high to cross a certain rocky part of the beach, forcing half of the group to go up and over a cliffy bit. Unfortunately the scrub here was not really ideal for walking through, and with no obvious track they quickly became a bit stuck. This resulted in me having to run up the little hill several times to try and look for them. They finally came over the hill after bashing through the dense scrub for around 30 minutes. Again, I’m not entirely sure that they’ve truly forgiven me for leading them slightly astray.
Cape Maria van Diemen is a rather magnificent, otherworldly place. There are parts that look like the Sahara Desert, others that look like the surface of Mars. Not really ideal holiday spots for mere mortal humans! Once you get all the way across the giant sand dunes though, the cape itself is lush and green. A track leads to the top, with views out over the sand dunes, to Cape Reinga, and to an island with a Maori name meaning ‘panting breath’, named so because apparently it’s quite exhausting to swim there.
An attempt to sleep under the stars that night was thwarted by a number of sandflies and mosquitos trying to suck our blood. These were well soothed by a nice trip to the Ngawha Hot Springs on the way back to Auckland. Unfortunately I was the only one who got to enjoy the hot springs, as the other car couldn’t find it, and the rest of my car couldn’t be bothered.
All in all, the far north is a fantastic, and unique part of the country. Would highly recommend. 10/10!
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