Blonde on a Road Trip

Today’s the day we’d be driving up the beach of ninety miles (Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē), which actually measures 88 kilometres in length… but Anneke (my knowledgeable local) says that apparently they originally measured it by how long it took for a horse to gallop along it… because that makes total sense…

And what’s even stranger is that New Zealand don’t even operate in miles; all their speed limits and distances use the metric system. 🤯

We had to be careful to check the tides, as we didn’t want to get stranded, even in Anneke’s indomitable 4WD Toyota Hilux.

High tide would be late morning, so we had to wait until about 1pm before setting off in the car. With that in mind, I suggested we walk down to the beach and get the lay of the land first.

As you can see, the beach was ever so busy and we weren’t sure if we’d be able to squeeze the pick-up truck onto it… yeah, right!!!

I guess it becomes hard to fill a beach that seemingly goes on forever, and it isn’t peak holiday season yet, so we weren’t too worried about traffic.

We set off with a few snacks in the car at about 1:30pm and began our drive down 90 Mile Beach.

We drove up for about an hour before stopping for a pick-up picnic.

Once we’d had our fill of salad and focaccia, we tried to take a picture together on the beach, with mixed success…

Once we’d finally got our jump shot, we moved on and got back in the Hilux. We made a stop along the way where there’s a reserve that sticks out in the water and is presumably cut off from the beach when the tide is in. There was a guy fishing off the edge of it, but it’s otherwise private land, so we just skirted around the edge of it and came across from well camouflaged pied shags.

They eventually flew off together, which was quite poetic, but one stayed in the shallow waves.

It took another half an hour to get to the end of the beach, where there didn’t seem to be an exit… We tried not to panic and I scrambled off towards what looked like a DOC sign for a walk and I could just about make out a map on it.

Thankfully, the map indicated a way out rather than a 90-minute drive back down the beach as the tide came in. Dicey! We also met a woman at the end of the beach who was hanging around smoking a questionable substance 👀while her husband and his friend were fishing and she pointed us in the direction of the nearest exit.

We found what looked like the way out, but we wouldn’t want to be attempting it in anything less capable than the Hilux as it was essentially a sandy river.

But in Anneke’s very confident and capable hands we made it through with ease and admired the giant sand dunes to our left.

We then drove 15 minutes up the Far North Road up towards Cape Reinga, which is a place steeped in Māori spirituality and meaning. It’s also a nature reserve and home to a lighthouse, which is no longer manned but has been fitted with an LED bulb instead.

Māori people believe that this most northerly point in New Zealand – Te Rerenga Wairua (the leaping place of the spirits) is where the spirits of the dead enter the underworld.

Cape Reinga is also where the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean meet and the two bodies of water clash in a confusion of waves. You certainly wouldn’t want to go swimming there. God knows where you’d end up!

We walked the short walk down to the lighthouse, passing a handful of people on our way, but by the time we got to the lighthouse we had it all to ourselves – glorious!

There were lots of signs along the path up to Cape Reinga from the car park which had been carved into concrete or wood. The concrete ones were somewhat legible, but the wooden ones were pretty weathered and made us look like a pair of 5-year-olds learning to read as we squinted at the text informing us of the plight of the local flora or spiritual history of the area.

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Having braved taking the helm in the ute/Hilux along the traffic-free beach, I took the wheel again and drove us the 1h45 back to the campsite in Ahipara from Cape Reinga.

It was pretty plain sailing, although there do seem to be an inordinate amount of roadworks going on in New Zealand.

To be fair, at least someone is doing something about the roads here!

We got back to the campsite at about 7ish and cooked up a quick pasta dish because we wanted to be able to experience a west coast sunset from the beach that evening. The campsite kitchen was getting pretty busy, with a large group of French people boasting about how many tuatua they’d caught on the beach that day. They are little clams that come up to the sand’s surface and each individual can legally collect no more than 50 to 150 a day. Based on their conversation, we’re not sure the French had adhered to this limit, but we weren’t the clam police and we had a dinner to eat.

After dinner, we set off for the beach on foot, but then realised we didn’t know the entry gate code and the campsite reception was closed, so we had to go back to the tent to find the piece of paper with it on. By this point we were running out of minutes till sunset, so we decided to hop in the Hilux again and drive the 10-minute walk instead.

Given that there wasn’t much dry sand available to sit on (just the 88km of it…) we plonked ourselves down in the sand dunes facing the beach, letting a bucketful of sand flow into our trainers in the process.

But it was all worth it for the peaceful sunset, which we enjoyed and admired with a beer in hand.

Once the sun had gone down and dark was falling, we went back to the campsite to drink our last beer and play Jenga before bed.

After an awesome day of doing one of the most surreal and yet coolest things I’ve done, it was time for bed in the tent one last time.

Oh, how I’ll miss the blow-up mattress life…