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.