Go North, Young Couple

So, to start, a quick story. When we were planning this trip, we were going to stop in Fiji on our way home. But in the end, that was prohibitively expensive, plus that would take away from our New Zealand time. And the nation of Fiji has had a significant amount of unrest of late. So we decided to go to Northland instead, hoping to get a taste of subtropical weather. We stayed just north of Kerikeri, on a river called Takou River (Incidentally, I think it's pronounced 'taco'). Most international visitors don't go north of Auckland, so Northland is much less of a tourist destination. Many Kiwis (the people) vacation in the North, in an area called the Bay of Islands, which includes Kerikeri. Where we were staying is at 35 degrees south, Which for comparison, is about as far from the equator as Northern Los Angeles. (The furthest south we were during our first week here was about 45 degrees south, which is equivalent of Wausau, WI.) The area has a very tropical feel.

We stayed at a cottage called the Magic Cottage at a resort called the Takou River Lodge. The entire resort is off the main grid. They generate their own electricity from solar and small scale hydro power. Our cottage was very cute, and was set into the tropical gardens that they have planted all around. We were surrounded by huge tree ferns, pohotukawa, kauri and palm trees. Also, fragrant tropical flowers, beautiful birds of paradise, and other great tropical plants. Perhaps most stunning of all was the birdlife. We were surrounded by birds. The most common were Tui, Pukeko, and Rosella. The Rosella were certainly the most striking, they are essentially a very colorful parakeet. The Tui is a native NZ bird that is mostly black/blue and eats nectar. The Pukeko is another native bird that looks a little like a chicken, except they are blue and have a large red beak. We also saw lots of quail, pheasants, Shags, herons, gulls. The area we were in is known to be home to a (relatively) large population of Kiwi (the birds) which are very rare. They are nocturnal, so we didn't see any. But we heard several bird calls that might have been kiwi. We're not very sure, since we don't know the kiwi call very well.

There was a kayak at the cottage that we could take down the river. We took it down to the ocean. It's about 25 minutes paddling. The river is tidal, and we paddled down at low tide, so the river was low, and we got stuck in the estuary trying to find where it was deep enough to paddle. But we finally made it to the ocean. It was ridiculously windy, but very beautiful. We found a hill to shelter the wind to have our picnic, and then waded into the ocean a bit before heading back during the rising tide.

We also explored a litte bit in the Puketi Kauri forest. The Kauri trees are the second largest trees in the world (behind Redwoods). The Northern part of the North Island used to be covered in Kauri forest, but they were cut down for farmland and timber. Now they've protected a few areas to preserve these incredible trees. Some of the oldest trees are believed to be between 1200 and 2500 years old, and are up to 45 feet around and 60 feet tall. The ones we saw were only a few hundred years old, but were still huge. The walk through the forest was nice, we saw a lot of the native plants, like the huge ferns that grow into tall trees living amongst the monster Kauri.

Overall, Northland is a beautiful place. I'm glad that we went up there. It was a nice chance to relax, and see some pretty incredible natural features of these islands.