Through Ancient Forests to the Far North of NZ

Greetings from the Northland, the area north of Auckland. First a word about New Zealand, with the help of this "handy" map.
It consists of two main islands creatively named North Island and South Island, a modest-sized one (Stewart) to the far south, and thousands of little ones round and about its lengthy shoreline. The entire country is just a little bit (6%) bigger than the State of Oregon, but nowhere near as compact -- it's 1000 miles from top to bottom. North Island where we are currently has 40% of the land but about 80% of the population. Indeed, one fourth of NZ's population of 4.28 million lives in the Auckland metropolitan area, which is at the base of that peninsula that juts up in the northwest corner of North Island.


North of that, the rest of that peninsula, is a quiet corner of the country by contrast, and that's where we've spent the last week exploring its shores and forests and immersing ourselves in the story of the kauri tree. The kauri is one of the largest and oldest trees on the planet, with some survivors in the Northland estimated to have been hundreds of years old even when the first permanent Maori settlers arrived around 1200 A.D., including this majestic one known as Te Matua Ngahere,
the second-largest tree in NZ with a girth of over 50 feet, or about 10 adults holding hands to encircle it! Because the root systems of kauri are fragile,
you cannot generally get up next to them, except for this next one with a board walk next to it, the Yakas Kauri , so-named after a Dalmatian settler. It's the number 7 tree in NZ. For comparison, Louise has a wingspan of about 5 1/2 feet.


Kauri were almost logged to extinction, however, and the forests have old stumps like this one, much as the Pacific NW has old cedar stumps. The trees grow quickly and with lots of branches 'til they reach the top of the forest canopy, then drop the lower branches and start bulking up. The bark is quite unusual --
this is a closeup of about one square foot of it -- and it succeeds in keeping most other plants from climbing up or attaching to the trunk, but the crown is another story.
A typical old kauri may have 30 different species of plants growing in its crown! Other trees nearby have easier-to-grab bark, and are a riot of epiphytic growth, with tag-along plants sometimes having so much foliage you can't tell which are the leaves of the host tree itself!
This is obviously a rain forest, most of it getting over 1500 mm (60") a year, and indeed we have had rain, from sprinkles to short strong rain, more than half of our days up north. It's off-and-on, however, so we Seattleites are right at home in it.

As we explained in our last blog, we're not biking. The roads are so narrow and twisty, they're even a bit scary to drive by car. But we got a killer deal on a small Nissan that's getting 32 mpg (gas works out to about $4/gal US), and the car costs only US$12 a day, insurance and tax included. Such a deal! To compensate for not biking, we're hiking quite a lot, and what hikes they've been. One of the first places we went to, only an hour's drive out of Auckland, was this stunning and empty black sand beach, Karekare,

where Joan Campion filmed the beach scenes for The Piano, her moody film of early life in NZ.


Nearby was Piha, a stunning place to look down on as you approach, and just as stunning when you take the hiking track to the south to look out at yet more dramatic rocks.
With rain, big trees, and mythic beaches and sea stacks like this, it certainly has a certain Pacific NW feel to it.
However, the vegetation is quite different, with lots of trees unlike anything in the US, and we can't recall any black sand beaches
in the NW like this one at Karekare. And as good as the hiking often is in our home turf, NZ has it beat.
Look at this walking track near Piha, or the clear signposting of another trail nearby, complete with a history stop a few km into the woods illustrating the kauri logging that went on in this area.

Kiwis take their trekking seriously, and have wonderful trails, or tracks as they call them.

A bit further on we went to the Kauri Museum, with more photos of the old logging, and a fascinating display of kauri gum, a form of amber. The trees exuded this to protect the tree from injuries, but early settlers learned to use kauri gum for a variety of things, including lacquers -- it supposedly makes the best musical instrument lacquer in the world. If it is old and dense enough, it can also be used for carving,
or just for display. The wood itself was prized for furniture and house construction,
as the walls and ceiling of this 150-year-old church demonstrate.

Still further up was the heart of the remaining kauri forest, with several beautiful trails that took us through them.
We passed many enormous and ancient kauri, finally coming to Tane Mahuta,
"Lord of the Forest," the biggest tree in New Zealand by volume. It's about 45 feet around,60 feet to the first branches, 150 feet tall overall. But the forest is full of many other wonders, including this geometric fern.


Our final exploration of kauri was yesterday, when we visited an ancient kauri forest, actually two ancient forests buried on top of each other. One is too old to be accurately carbon-dated, over 100,000 years old, the other about 45,000 years old.
The "newer" one was almost certainly killed off by a tsunami, as all the trees of that age are flat and pointing in the same direction. Here is a tour guide showing us a digging through the 45,000 y-o layer to the really old stuff. Ancient trees like this are among the oldest non-fossilized plant life ever found. These were excavated decades ago, primarilly from the late 1800s through the Great Depression years, by men looking for deposits of kauri gum that was still usable even after all those aeons. It was a rough life being a "gumdigger," but it kept a number of folks in this area alive during those hard years.
Ancient logs are still being found, and you can buy this one, now refashioned as a sofa, for only US$33,000. Imagine having the oldest sofa in your neighborhood -- or do you already have that distinction, or feel like you might?


The Northland is a narrow peninsula, no point on it more than 25 miles from seawater, and so there are many beaches. We decided to leave the driving to someone else for a bus trip up so-called Ninety Mile Beach (officially only 56 miles long!), and that way got a drive on the beach with its 100 kph (62 mph) speed limit.
Along the way we drove up a quicksand river, the trick being to put your vehicle in low gear and DON'T STOP! We didn't, until we came to a pull-off for some of our fellow-passengers to do some "sand surfing."


Oh, those crazy Kiwis! One of them even obliged by showing us how NOT to do it. At last we came to Cape Reinga, the northern end of NZ. The water is a bit choppy out there as the Tasman Sea between NZ and Australia meets the Pacific Ocean. Maori legend has it that a Maori's spirit takes off back to whence the Maori came across the ocean, from this dramatic point.

Well, yesterday was election day in NZ, but it was fairly anti-climactic. Most Kiwis were far more interested in the American election than their own. We have yet to meet a New Zealander who thought the wrong guy won in the US. Of course we are ecstatic to be done with Mr. Bush and his ilk, and feel we can now safely come back from New Zealand next year. Like the US, the Kiwis voted for "regime change," in their case swinging from a party somewhat left of the American Democrats to one pretty close to the Democrats, even though they consider it right of center.

Meanwhile we are still debating what to do after we finish our tour of the Northland next weekend, with our feelings strongly leaning towards continuing to drive and to put off biking until we go to the South Island, starting in January. A cyclist was very badly hurt by a passing car a few days ago in the area we were going to head to by bike, and we're not convinced the roads in that part of the country are much safer than the ones here, which are almost suicidal for biking. However, the hiking is much much better than we expected, and that will hopefully fulfill our endorphin needs for the coming two months. We'll let you know the final decision in our next blog, and say a little more about Kiwi history after we revisit Waitangi, site of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 that created the modern New Zealand.

Arrived in Aotearoa

...which is Maori for New Zealand.

After a 36-hour voyage from New Caledonia, just inside the tropics at 22 degrees, we reached Bay of Islands NZ, about 35 degrees from the equator, which is comparable to Cape Hatteras, Memphis TN, or San Luis Obispo.
That was the first of four ports we visited prior to Auckland, where we've now been for a week. The ship slipped past a few dozen islands and anchored, and we tendered in to Waitangi, sort of like coming to the US from Europe and landing simultaneously at Plymouth MA and Concord MA and Williamsburg VA, as Waitangi is "the birthplace of New Zealand." The most important single event in NZ history occurred here on February 6, 1840: the signing of a treaty between the majority of Maori tribes and the British, in which the Maori agreed to become subjects of her majesty Queen Victoria in exchange for the protection of the crown and the preservation of their rights.



We had a full day of hikes, however, and will say a bit more about Waitangi and its chequered role in NZ history a week from now, when we pay a return visit by land. On this first visit we took off on two walks, first of course up the nearest hill with a viewpoint, then past a mangrove forest

to a small but scenic waterfall, both accompanied by our cruise friends Neil and Esther. It's early Spring here, and the weather was in the high teens -- Celsius, that is, or mid-60's Fahrenheit.
The trails were easy to find, well-marked, and extremely well-maintained, as all the half-dozen trails we've taken now in our first week and a half have been. We're gonna really like it here!

At each port, we arrived at 8 a.m. and sailed about 5. Leaving Bay of Islands, we had just enough daylight to see the famous "Hole in the Wall" rock from the west, then to look back westward at sunset for another (un-holey, but colorful) view.

Overnight our boat took us to Mt. Manganui in the Bay of Plenty
-- apparently the Maori were generous in providing for the dietary needs of Capt. Cook, who gave it that name. The four of us, including Neil and Esther again, took a walk around the base,
then Jeff took off for the 232 m (about 750') summit,

where he got to look down on a paraglider who was checking out the town. Kiwis are into extreme sports like the Germans are into beer, and are throwing themselves off cliffs, bridges and buildings everywhere we go. We'll say more about this further on!

Down at the base of Mt. M. was the only saltwater natural hot springs resort in the southern hemisphere,
and with exclusivity like that, of course we wanted in. Here's Louise checking out their version of a water jet. Afterwards we walked the stunning beach, and did a little 'catch and release' shell collecting for the close-up shot.


Off we sailed again at 5 and arrived the next day in Napier, on the east side of the North Island. Napier was hit by a 7.9 earthquake in 1931 and downtown was pretty much levelled by the quake and subsequent fires.

It was quickly rebuilt, however, and it was decided to rebuild with reinforced concrete in the latest style, Art Deco. Napier consequently has the largest and most concentrated collection of art deco buildings in the world! It was interesting . . . but Art Deco is a very restrained style, and frankly looks best when it's a counterpoint to other more exuberant styles.
A whole downtown of art deco buildings is like a whole museum of Picasso in his blue period. OK, impressive, but . . . For contrast, we headed to the residential area (and a high lookout point, of course), and discovered this,
our first cherry tree of the Spring season, plus a lot of 19th century Carpenter Gothic Victorian homes that survived because wood buildings as a rule survive quakes better than stone, due to their flexibility.

Our fourth stop was Wellington, the nation's capital and second-largest city, which is about as far south of the equator as NYC is north. We'll be back in December, so decided to focus on just one thing, and that was Te Papa, as the National Museum is known in Maori as well as by Pakeha (the Maori word for non-Maori, a word much used in NZ by Pakeha as well as by Maori).
There was lots to see, but we'll limit the pictures to just these two. The first is of Louise with a moa, a now extinct bird. It had only one natural predator, the eagle whose claws you see about to attack it, until the Maori arrived. Not being members of the Green Party, they did what any normal group would do, they hunted it to extinction. And then starved, literally, as moa had become a major source of their protein.
Any lessons here for countries that view the ocean as having unlimited fish? The second photo is of NZ from space (this part is the North Island looking north from the Wellington area), and we spent many excited minutes studying where we expect to cycle in the coming months.

At last we reached Auckland and said goodbye until March 16 to the Volendam.

We'll reboard it then for a cruise to Japan via many more exciting places, stay tuned for that next spring. It has been a wonderful cruise, well beyond our expectations. One of the little things that made it fun were the daily towel animals that our cabin attendant Sukarji made from ordinary handtowels. We also got much more out of our visit to the South Seas islands we visited thanks to the lecturers, particularly Professor Cluney MacPherson, a Sociologist whose specialty is Economic Development.
It's so rewarding when you have a good professor or a good book to tune your eyes to the correct frequency where you begin to see things that otherwise would have been fuzzy.

Well, it's been a busy week here, so let's just talk about three things: extreme sports, a surprise invite for a drive out of town, and a hike up a fairly new volcanic island.

You'd think the middle of NZ's biggest city would not be a place for crazy stuff like bungy jumping -- remember, NZ is the birthplace of bungying -- but you would be wrong.
Walking down a major street, we saw these folks getting onto what looked like a stainless steel sofa (click on the photo to enlarge it to see what a flimsy little escape vehicle they're on! -- hit the back button to return here). Then those cords tightened up faster than you could say "Holy S---!" and these guys went from zero to 120 (and that's mph, not kph!) in 2 seconds flat, hurtling waaaaay
past the tops of those tall towers and then bouncing up and down, bungy style, for a minute or two before being let back to earth. OK, that's wild! Then we turned the corner and came to the Sky Tower, the tallest man-made structure south of the equator at 333 m (a tad over 1000 feet). It's a bird! It's a plane!
No, it's another crazy Kiwi in a 500-foot freefall off the Sky Tower! Yup, you go up to the 192 m level, get a tether attached, then they lower you below the platform and leave you dangling for a few seconds, then let you rip. You free-fall until you're only a few stories away from going splaaaat when the guy wires to the sides slow you down for a remarkably smooth landing. Oh, those fun-loving Kiwis!

In our 8 days in Auckland, we managed to find quieter fun in three cultural events: a chamber orchestra concert, a symphony concert, and a performance of Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. At intermission for the first of these, Louise asked a woman about our age with a haircut she admired if she could recommend a hairdresser, as it's been 5 weeks.
Before intermission was over Gae had invited us for a drive in the country two days later. We stopped at a beach near her "bach," Kiwi for a weekend place in the country, then drove over to Tawharanui Regional Park.

Oh, what a beautiful country this is! We took a 5-mile hike over a few stiles, past a few of NZ's 34 million sheep,
and down this 20% slope that's advertised to be a mountain bike route. We also got to see how hilly, twisty, narrow and sometimes shoulderless the roads are in the "Northland," the area north from Auckland.
Gae might have saved our lives, as we came back convinced that this part of NZ is just not worth biking -- way too dangerous. We leave tomorrow in a rental car for a week's jaunt, figuring we'll get plenty of exercise on the walking trails (or "tracks" as Kiwis call them), and will start our biking a few days later with a ferry ride out of Auckland to a much quieter part of NZ.


Another adventure in Auckland was taking the ferry 30 minutes to Rangitoto Island, which did not exist until it popped out of the sea about 600 years ago, the most recent of the 52 volcanoes that make up Auckland and its immediate surroundings. Here's a shot of Rangitoto from Mt. Evans, another
one of those volcanoes that's now a park near downtown with killer views. As a fairly new place, vegetation is still in the process of getting a toe-hold on Rangitoto, yet there were some parts of the island with tall trees and reasonably dense vegetation.

Near the top we explored these lava caves, created when molten lava created its own tunnel, then left it empty when the flow stopped. One last push and we were to the 700' summit for this view of downtown Auckland.


Sorry, no pictures yet of Louise's new haircut, but it's been called "trendy" and "youthful-looking," so it might make it hard for us to convince places to give us a senior discount. We'll write next about our adventures in the Northland.