The Far North 17-20th April

When looking for a good hostel we check 2 things. Firstly the Lonely Planet which has a little write up of the hostel. Secondly in the BBH Guide which gives each hostel a satisfaction rating - anything in the 90%'s is going to be something pretty special. The Endless Summer Lodge at Ahipara (the bottom end of Ninety Mile Beach) got 95% and you can definitely see why. (Kenny G recommended we stay here). It's one of those rare places that is not only in the perfect place (Ninety Mile Beach, surf beach for beginners outside the front door - photo above), is beautiful inside and out, clean and also friendly. That's me standing in our bedroom window. If we hadn't got booked flights to Oz we could have definitely stayed much longer.

Sod the environment ! Quad bikes are essential if you've only got a limited amount of time to see ninety mile beach. I don't know how much fuel we burned up, we were having too much fun to care. Apart from racing along the shoreline there were rocks and small sand dunes to negotiate. There was nobody telling us where to go or what to do or how fast to drive. A five minute lesson from the people we hired them from + we were off... left to our own devices on 75 km of sand (but for some reason they call it ninety mile beach) There's no "nanny state" here when it comes to the outdoors. What with all the mucking about and double donuts we managed to get 30 km up the beach past monster sized sand dunes (150 ft high) and impossibly run rundown holiday homes which NZlander's spend their summers doing up. We found out later that planning restrictions here are very tight - nobody is allowed to bulldoze their property and rebuild on the land. But it appears there's nothing in the rules to stop you extending your house by parking a bus in the front room.






This is Cape Reinga which is the northern most tip of the north island. It's where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet. Apparently one of them is 10 metres higher than the other. I don't understand how that can happen and nobody could explain.... out here it's just a "well known fact." But the point of these pictures is that Cape Reinga is as far as we can go in New Zealand. There's no more of it left. Which means it's time to go somewhere else.