Today we went on an adventure to find some giant Kauri trees, and we weren’t disappointed! It was a bit of a drive to get to Manginangina Kauri Walk but Andy thought it was a good idea to take “the scenic route”. This involved driving round the peninsula by road along twisty windy up and down roads for the best part of an hour and a half. It was beautiful scenery to begin with, but both of us wanted the twisty road to end after a while. Fortunately the Kauri trees made it all worthwhile.
You really don’t see much else on the roads up where we are on the North Island. When we did eventually connect up with a major road we did see something quite unusual……a bus (probs a mobile home) towing a car towing a boat - not something you see every day at home!
The Kauri trees are incredible! They stand approx 50m tall and the widest once had a circumference of 13m. The tree ferns and all the other life in the forest was simply amazing. Had it not been for 5 very noisy Ozzy tourists with voices like fog horns, it would have been the perfect forest experience!
We stopped for a spot of lunch 10 mins away in a little place called Paihia. We found a Bar on the board walk with comfy sofas which looked out to sea, a band playing and good food.
After our late lunch, we drove 5 minutes down the coast to Opua where we got on a little car ferry which took all of 4 minutes to do the crossing and were home in no time at all. I can’t believe we could have done the ferry crossing this morning and avoided the best part of 2hrs of wiggly roads! Note to self to pay more attention to the directions suggested next time.
Dinner on the seafront was lovely as always.
Me beside a gigantic Kauri tree
Humongous Kauri Tree
Andy in the Kauri Forest
More spectacular trees!
New Zealand tree fern
A bus towing a car towing a boat!
The little Jimny hire car
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