To round out our New Zealand adventure, we journeyed up to pretty much the one place in the country we hadn’t made it yet – the Northlands! This region north of Auckland is a long peninsula with the Pacific Ocean on the east and the Tasman Sea on the west. This area has large Māori populations but in general is not very populated. It also gets some serious water bombs (intense sudden rain storms), which we experienced a couple times!

The Towns

We spent our first night in the town of Whangarei (pronounced Fawn-ga-ray, wh’s in NZ are f’s) which is the largest city of the Northlands. It’s also where Keith Urban is from, a fun fact we learned while watching the The Voice Australia with our Airbnb host Joss and her friend. They were great, and along with Keith Urban trivia they also had fun recommendations for what we should do while in the area. We took most of them to heart and our next couple days were all based on their suggestions!

After visiting multiple waterfalls on our drive out of town, we spent our Saturday evening at the annual Kerikeri post-half marathon street fair. Apparently every year this town hosts a half marathon and it is their biggest event of the year, so afterward they throw a big street party with food vendors and music. We were probably the only non-Aussies there, we were so lucky to randomly be in town for it! We ate Paella, bao buns, and a mussel fritter. It felt very similar to street fairs in Ballard back home, which we love!

The Nature Sites

The biggest tourist attraction in the Northlands is Cape Reinga, which is the northern most point of NZ. It was crazy windy and crazy beautiful, and you could see where the Tasman Sea and a Pacific Ocean tides meet! We also stopped by 90 Mile Beach, which was exactly how it sounds. It’s a popular place to drive down the beach but we were a little too risk averse to attempt that in our little Prius. We did however attempt to go to the sand dunes further up the coast and weren’t quite risk averse enough and almost got our car stuck on the road. Highly recommend 4WD for this part of the country!

We had two gorgeous camping spots along beaches while we were up here. One was right near Cape Reinga and near the start of the Te Paki Coastal Track, which we did the initial climb of in the morning to get the spectacular views. The second was on our way back down to Auckland at a campground owned by a Baptist Church. It was so well maintained and had its own private beach, and we had it completely to ourselves! John enjoyed both a cold evening and morning swim, while I watched and enjoyed a glass of wine and cup of coffee, respectfully. It was a lovely place!

Saying Goodbye to NZ

We ended our trip through New Zealand by spending Thanksgiving with our friend Corinne in Auckland. One of her roommates and one of her coworkers joined us, so we got to help host their first American Thanksgiving! After 8 trips to the grocery store in 2 days, we learned that finding Thanksgiving food in a country that doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving is quite difficult. We made it work though and we were grateful to be able to spend such a wonderful holiday with friends!

Now that we’re leaving, a few of our favorite New Zealand-isms we’ve learned while traveling here-

• Walking barefoot here is completely normal. We saw people walking down the street in the city, in grocery stores, public bathrooms (yikes), kids walking home from school, pretty much everywhere. They have strong feet!
• What’s for tea? = What’s for dinner?
• Tramping = backpacking
• Jandals = flip flops
• A nice walk = a good hiking trail. It sounds condescending when you just did a 5 hour strenuous hike and someone says oh yeah that’s a nice walk, like you just went for a stroll down the street
• Wee = little. You want a wee bit of sugar? That’s just a wee bird. Etc.
• Heaps = lots

Now that we’ve almost run out our tourist visa it’s time to move on. New Zealand will always have a special place in our hearts!

Christine