Kiting at Te Paki Dunes & Spirits Bay

January 10^th, 2020

I woke up to a glorious looking day at Tapotupatu Bay.  After a bit of breakfast, I went for a stroll along the beach.  A few kids and adults were playing in the water and some fishermen were pulling their boat out of the water.  At about 10 am I headed back towards the Te Paki sand dunes.  Today I wanted to try something different, not sand boarding, but playing around with my paraglider.

The beach at Tapotupatu Bay:

Cool roads with the sand dune in the distance.

The parking lot was quieter than the day before but there were still tourists up on the dunes having a blast.  This time, since I was carrying my paragliding backpack, it was much easier to know what I could take and could not take.  I had the luxury of bringing water, my phone, sunscreen and even some snack bars.  The hike up the hill was a bit more challenging with the extra 30-35 pounds of weight, but it wasn’t too bad.

There's my destination...the main peak.

Reaching the peak of the main dune where I had started my first sand boarding run the day before, I was a bit dismayed that the wind was already pretty strong even though it was still morning, albeit late morning.  I descended the dune towards the ocean figuring that the wind shouldn’t be as strong lower down.  I cracked open the wing open about 2/3’s the way down but had trouble stopping the wing from rolling and folding over in the blasts of wind.  Bundling it up and throwing it over my shoulder, I went even further down.  At this spot, I couldn’t see the sea anymore as there was another, smaller dune in front of me.  This made me wonder what the wind was going to be like.  Was I going to be in a rotor zone?  This is turbulent air caused by an obstruction, similar to a rock in a river and how the water is disturbed around it.   Oh, let’s give it a try.

Made it to the peak...there's the ocean.

At first, I tried kiting the wing without connecting to it.  This is relatively safe as obviously if the wind gets too strong, I can just let go.  It was strong, but not too bad.  I did have to release one side once, holding on to the other so the wing just didn’t blow away up the hill.  Okay, let’s go lower still.

My rolled up wing...

Now I put on my helmet, strapped into my harness and connected it to the wing.  Game on.  I brought it up a few times and it wasn’t too bad…in fact it was lots of fun.  After a while I tried practicing some different things:  touching one wing tip on the ground, bringing it back up and then touching the other wing tip.  I worked on the cobra launch which is a technique for strong wind where you line the wing parallel to the wind and bring up one side so that it’s not so much like a big sail on a boat as it comes up.  I tried skiing in the sand a bit, being pulled by the paraglider.

My confidence grew and so I slowly worked my way higher up the dune.  What concerned me was that the higher you go, the stronger the wind gets.  The wind has no option to go up and over an obstacle like this.  So higher up the dune, more air is getting forced up and over it and getting compressed so it’s similar to a wide river going through a narrow gap, there’s no option but for the water to speed up to get all of that volume through, which is called a Venturi.  The worst thing to happen would be to get picked up, fly up to the top of the dune and blown over the back.  Then there’s nothing providing you lift and you’d start to sink down behind the dune and you could be in serious rotor (turbulence) causing your wing could collapse and you crash…hopefully not landing on a sand boarder!

One third of the way up the 100 meter high sand dune, I brought the wing up and within a few seconds, hello…up I went!  Now it didn’t seem like a big deal at first but I got picked up a few hundred feet.  My immediate thought was apply no brakes, keep my speed up.  I seemed to just go straight up.  I didn’t actually look behind me to see how high I was relative to the peak of the dune, I was more focussed on trying to penetrate forwards.  I brought a small harness with me to New Zealand and I need to use my hands to actually get into the seat, which in this case, I didn’t even bother so I was just kind of hanging from the harness.  Eventually I slowly flew forward and probably covered about 500 feet as I slowly descended.  I was a bit concerned that I was coming down on the backside of the next, smaller dune but I trusted in the laminar flow of the air and it was all good…but that was enough for today.  I had ground handled for almost 2 hours so it was time for lunch.

It may be hard to hear my commentary, but I'm showing the footsteps on the dune where I got picked up and went for my little "ride".

It's hard to make out in this picture, but that darker patch is some small plants and rocks.  To me it looked like the Sarlaac Pit from Star Wars Return of the Jedi.  If you fall in the creature takes several thousand years to absorb your nutrients...lovely.

Such a cool place.

From the dunes I decided to head to Spirits Bay to check it out for camping for the night.  After 15 kilometres of a gravel road I pulled into the bay and wow, the drive was worth it.  The camping area was huge with a different few sections with green grass and some trees here and there.  The dominant feature in the area was a hill on one side that extended to the ocean.  The Maoris believe that the spirits of the dead gather to leave this world and travel to their ancestral home from a tree up on that hill so it is forbidden to hike up it.  The beach was a five minute walk from the camp and there was a small fresh water pond/lake part way there. 

I did a slight detour to the another bay and there were signs on the road warning you that livestock was loose...but I thought this was cool, 4-5 horses chilling on the beach by themselves.

The sacred hill:

Betty 2.0's spot for the night:

The beach was gorgeous and runs for miles in the direction away from the sacred hill.  It is made up primarily of small broken shells instead of just sand.  A great spot to hang out, try a bit of surfing or swim.  I didn’t get into the water that afternoon as I had a job to do…de-sand my wing.  I spent the better part of an hour working on getting the sand out of my paraglider and also reconnecting my reserve parachute to my harness as I had taken that off before tackling the dunes so I wouldn’t have to repack it.  It was another gorgeous beach camping spot…there are so many of these in this country!

Te Paki Sand Dune & Cape Reinga

January 9^th, 2020

A must do if you visit the north end of the north island of New Zealand is to visit the Te Paki sand dunes.  Te paki means “the sunny” in Maori.  The dunes are huge, about 100 meters high which is about the same as the Dune de Pyla sand dunes in France which I visited back in 2010, where Betty 1.0 died and was reborn.  The popular activity here is “sand boarding”.  Grab a boogie board, hike up the dune and ride your board back down, typically on your belly.  Well I had to try this as one of the highlights of my Central American trip in 2015 was “volcano boarding” in Nicaragua.  This didn’t seem as hardcore as my board was plastic and I didn’t have to don protective coveralls and lab glasses and ride a board of wood and metal.

After pulling into the small parking lot where I was greeted by a local Maori host, I hopped out of the van and got ready for the adventure.  Yet I wasn’t quite sure what to take.  Sure the board, but what about footwear.  Flip flops would be a bit of a pain coming down on the board so I opted to go barefoot.  What to do with the van key, oh just hide it near one of the tires…you definitely didn’t want it to fall out of your pocket on the sand dune, it would be gone forever.  Water?  Oh I’ll just have to do without as taking a small backpack seemed like an encumbrance, at least being a solo visitor.  And unfortunately bringing my phone to take pics and videos didn’t make sense either.

There's the peak:

It was already after 2 pm and as I left the parking area and started towards the base of the first dune, all of a sudden my feet were suddenly on fire!  Ouch, ouch, ouch!  I retreated to the van and grabbed my flip flops.  Later I saw some different strategies by others, either full on shoes or even just wearing their socks.  I hiked up the first slope, traversed to the next, hiked up it and proceeded over to the last climb up to the main peak.  Along the way I did stop to watch some sledders make their way down the slope, it looked fairly easy, but fun!

At the top I finally got a view of the Tasman Sea, still probably a kilometre away.  It was a great vista from the summit.  After a few minutes, it was time for the first ride down the dune.  I have to admit it was pretty steep but I hopped on the board and down I went.  You could pick up some good speed but it wasn’t nearly as long of a ride as the volcano boarding so I probably only got up to about 30 km/h.  After the first run, I realized it’s a pretty good idea to keep your mouth closed!  (read: gritty teeth)  I guess I was smiling too much.

In the parking lot, I had met a young couple from Saskatchewan who were on their honeymoon and they only had one board so I offered that they could borrow mine and race each other and I could film them with their phone.  After that, I went up with the guy and we slid down with the lady videoing us.  It had been a fair amount of walking in sand so all of us started heading back but we had two more slopes to go down…so much easier returning to the car than getting to the peak!

Back in the van I realized that I had sand stuck to me…everywhere.  Okay, wherever I end up camping tonight, there better be a shower, even if it’s a cold one!

Driving another 15-20 kilometres north, I reached the most northern end of the island at Cape Reinga where there’s a lovely lighthouse.  The spot is known as “Te RerengaWairua” to the Maoris which means the “leaping-off place of spirits”.  It was about an 800 meter hike down to the lighthouse with gorgeous views everywhere.

A nice viewpoint before arriving at the lighthouse:

It was interesting to see the “signpost” by the lighthouse that had the distance to a variety of places including Vancouver, which was 11,222 km away.  Also, it had the equator and the south pole.  The distance to the south pole was 6211 km and I checked the photo I took at the south end of the south island which had a similar signpost and there it was only 4803 km, with the equator only being at 5140 km, so the south end was just over half way between the two.  What a difference in the weather from when I visited the south to the north.  This day it was sunny (or as the Kiwi weather forecasters say “fine”) and about 26 degrees with no wind whereas when I was in the south it was a lot cooler with 30-40 km/h wind and rain coming in almost horizontally!

The closest campsite was Tapotupatu (yeah, I could remember the name to save my life) so I decided to check it out as it supposedly had a cold shower.  The other option was Spirits Bay which a lovely elderly gentleman that I met 3 weeks earlier working at a gas station back near Wellington told me I must visit, but it was 20 some kilometres away and most of that was gravel road.  I’ll stay there tomorrow I figured.

The campsite was fairly full but I found a spot by the stream that emptied out into the sea and occasionally had waves flow up it.  An almost full moon rose above the ridge in front of me which created a lovely ambience with the outflowing water.  Sweet spot, and a great day.

My camping spot for the night...it looks like I'm by myself but actually there are campers all around.

Colossal Kauri Trees

January 8^th, 2020

Continuing north from Port Roberts the road took me along the west coast, or close to it.  I took a slight detour off of the main road and stopped at the Trounson Kauri Forest Walk.  Kauri trees are these massive evergreen trees that used to be present fairly worldwide in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods but now are only found in the southern hemisphere.

Hmm...maybe I won't go down this road...

When I visited the 1000 year old tree near Wellington, the family that I met there had mentioned that in the Northland I would experience these “boot washing stations” before many hikes.  It was similar to going through a metal detector at an airport but with brushes for the soles of your feet that were activated by pulling a lever forward, similar to a shoe washing machine you find at a curling rink.  Some disinfectant spray also shot up to finish the job.

A nice bird greeted me as I arrived.

The foot washing station.

With my soles cleansed, I began the short half hour hike.  A lot of it was on boardwalk and there were a multitude of signs instructing you to stay on the trail otherwise you were jeopardizing the life of these giants.  You see the reason for these precautions was due to a deadly fungus whose species name is agathidicida which means “kauri killer” and the symptoms that the tree endures is known as kauri dieback.  This deadly fungus can be spread by humans walking around so I see why they take this seriously.  Some of these kauri trees are over 1000 years old and it would be said to see them go.

It's a bit hard to get the scale in these pics...but let me reassure you, they were big!

One that is dying off...

I liked the twist in the trunk.

The hike was great and I got back on the road for another hour or so until I reached the mouth of the Mangamuka River.  Across the inlet was a huge sand dune which looked like a promising place to play around with a paraglider but there was no easy way to get there.  I enjoyed the view then continued another 9 kilometres up the inlet to my camp spot for the night.  It was a piece of private land, kind of an interesting bit of relatively flat grassy field up on a promontory.  There was one fair sized encampment of a few tents, a tarp shelter and some vehicles at one end of the property.  A half dozen kids were running around, shouting and having fun playing some kind of game.  I decided to park Betty 2.0 at the furthest flat spot I could find from them for some peace.

Well within 10 minutes some of the Maori kids came running over to my van.  They were playing some kind of tag game and my vehicle happened to be a “home base”.  I didn’t mind.  We started chatting and they were quite interested to learn that I was from Canada and that I’d been travelling in this van all over their country.  I was a bit shocked that a few of the older kids really had no idea where Canada was.  I mentioned Vancouver and no lightbulbs went off.  One boy who returned after the others had left boldly asked me if I had any Canadian money that he could have.  First, I showed him a $20 Canadian bill and compared it to the New Zealand one, they are very similar:  same colour, almost an identical picture of the Queen, both are plastic and have the see through band on one side.  Then I remembered that I had just found a toonie a few days before in my bag (a 2 dollar coin), so I showed it to him and explained the origin.  At first, we had the 1 dollar coin with the loon bird on it so it was name the “loonie” and it was only natural that the subsequent $2 coin be a “toonie”.  So I gave him the coin and he was super happy although five minutes later when the rest of the tribe came back, he could hardly remember the name of the coin and the story behind it.  Oh well…

Leaving the Coromandel Peninsula

January 6^th-7^th, 2020

The next few days were essentially driving days.  I cut across the Coromandel peninsula, passing back through the town of Coromandel and then continued west.  I looked at some campgrounds along the east coast towards Auckland but settled on going back to the campground from my very first night in Betty 2.0, 68 days earlier, the rugby grounds in a small town called Onewhero (which I now know is pronounced “own-a-fair-o” versus “one-where-o”).  It was free and a sure thing and I wanted to work on my advertisement for selling the van so I needed to take various pictures and write up the ad.

Some Buddhist retreat beside the road...felt like I was back in Nepal!

The next day I travelled through Auckland and thankfully, being the Monday after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays the traffic was fine.  I visited probably 5-6 Mitre stores, a big home hardware type chain.  I was looking for some weather sealing foam or rubber for the back hatch of the van as one side has a bit bigger of a gap than it should and dust and moisture can get inside.  At the start of my trip, I MacGyvered it with some excess bits from a foam pad that I use for my bed over the cushions, plus some duct tape but I need something a bit longer term and better looking before I sell it.  Back in Dunedin on the south island in November, I found come good stuff in a Mitre store but didn’t buy it at the time and I never found it again.   Eventually I located some decent stuff here in Auckland.  I also had to stop at a Toyota parts store to pick up a tail gate latch as mine had broken.  Luckily that was an easy fix.

I continued north from Auckland to another freedom camping spot called Port Roberts.  It was a decent place.  Now it’s on to the last major section of New Zealand that I haven’t covered yet…the Northland.