5th November
A fair old drive on the cards today, to reach Henderson Bay we had driven up the east coast, so to get back down south we wanted to travel the west coast which is supposed to be wilder and more savage than the east.
John at the hostel had told us about a small car ferry that crossed the Hokianga Harbour from Kohukohu to Rawene, and besides saving us some travelling time going round, this seemed like a fun thing to do, so we weaved along snaking moutain roads to catch the midday ferry.
When we got to the small town of Rawene on the other side, we stopped for lunch overlooking the stormy seas at the entrance to the harbour, the weather had steadily been deteriorating as we travelled south and rain was imminent. Rawene is a small town with many historic buildings and was the third settlement in New Zealand.
One of the planned highlights on this route was the Waipoua Kauri Forest. Waipoua Forest is one of the best examples of kauri forest in New Zealand. It is famous for having the two largest living kauris and also has the largest population of North Island brown kiwi in Northland, although since these are nocturnal, we didn’t see them. The drive down the highway gave us a good introduction to the beauty of the forest, winding as it does through magnificient stands of tall kauri, rimu and northern rata, and since it was raining by now, it certainly looked and felt prehistoric. We called in to see the largest Kauri in the forest, Te Kane, which stands at 53 metres, but unlike the redwoods, its not the height of these trees but their sheer solidity and girth. These were the trees the Maori used to make their war canoes.
We headed up to the lookout above the forest, but since the weather had closed in so much we didn’t get to see much, so we headed onto Kaihu Farm, our hostel for the night.
On arriving we felt we just wanted to chill out for the afternoon, since it wasn’t much cop weatherwise anyway and without internet (Ed is getting withdrawal symptoms) we decided to do a jigsaw, and were still trying (and failing) to complete it the following morning, even with the aid of some other hostel guests. In our defence, it wasn’t a normal jigsaw where you get a picture, you get a clue as to what it is, but you don’t know until you’ve completed the jigsaw.