tour

We got an early start at 12:30am when the guys upstairs turned on their music again, and then cranked it way up. We called the front office to complain, and we also heard other residents knocking on the floor, doors and walls. About 15 minutes later all was quiet again – we learned in the morning that the hotel actually took their speakers away. We wished they had taken the Jacuzzi away also, as our walls continued to hum for another hour.

We managed to get back to sleep and even slept in a bit, we had a late breakfast and were ready for our Hawkes Bay Wine Tour at 12:30pm. Hawkes Bay is one of the two major wine regions of New Zealand, and home to dozens of wineries. The tour we booked took us and seven other people to four of them. The first stop was at Esk Valley Estate – it appears relatively humble compared to later stops, but they made of a few of our favorites of the day. Sarah enjoyed the Verdelho white, and I fell in love with the peppery Syrah. They don’t have US distributors, so we bought a bottle of each to take home.

Esk Valley wine selection. The peppery Syrah is on the right.

The second stop was Mission Estate Winery – one of the oldest and largest of NZ wine makers. Thier beautiful building was constructed in the early 1900’s, and sawed into thirds and towed up the mountain in the 1920’s to get out of the flood zone it was originally built in. Their restaurant comes highly recommended, both for food and view/location. If we’re ever in the area again we definitely would book a table there. Their whites were a bit too ‘creamy’ for my tastes, but I enjoyed their Merlot a lot. One of our tour mates, from England, had the best line about it: “Quaffable. The evaporation rate won’t be very great.” (Meaning he’d drink it fast.)

On the balcony of Mission Estate Winery overlooking a few of their vines. Awesome possom sweater.

Craggy Range Winery was a highlight. Built at the foot of Craggy Range, it’s a very modern looking winery with a spectacular view of the mountains. We loved their wines (especially the Savignon, Syrah and the blended “Sophia”), which are available through Kobrand in the US. Hopefully we’ll be able to find some when we return home.

Craggy Range Winery

The view of Craggy Range from the tasting room.

Sarah at Craggy Range

Before out last winery stop on the tour we took a detour to Te Mata peak at the top of Craggy Range. It’s about a 15 minute drive up the mountain to a spectacular lookout point with a view directly down to the winery. There are a myriad of bike trails and hang gliding launch points up there also.

From atop Te Mata you can see Craggy Range Winery and the Pacific Ocean. The ramp in front is to launch yourself off of for hang gliding.

Our final stop was Vidal Winery. It was between lunch and dinner hours, and they had preparred a delicious spread of food for us in the restaurant to enjoy while we tasted their wines. This is another place I would love to eat at sometime – the tasters we had were terrific, and almost outshined the wines.

Awesome food sampler at Vidal Winery.

Once we arrived back at the hotel, we grabbed a pizza to go from downstairs and crashed in our room. For the first time on the trip we turned on the TV, only to realize why we hadn’t bothered before.

Good Morning

This is it, the big day we’ve been driving for: The Top of New Zealand! There’s quite a bit to do at the top of New Zealand – there’s the Cape Reinga lighthouse at the tip, there’s sand tobogganing and there’s 90 Mile Beach. It’s legal to drive the length of 90 Mile Beach on the sand, but the rental car companies won’t let you take their cars out there, and amatuers get bogged down in the sand and flooded at high tide almost every day. So we booked ourselves on a day long bus tour and left the driving to Paul. The 300 mile round trip takes all day, so we were picked up at our hotel at 7am.

An early start - up with the sun.

Gumdiggers Park

After picking up our bus mates and box lunches our first stop was at Gumdiggers Park. Gumdiggers were like California’s golddiggers, except this gold is dried sap from ancient Kauri trees, more commonly known as amber. In the 1800’s and early 1900’s it had tremendous industrial use as the main ingredient in resins and varnishes – of essential importance to sailing ships and furniture makers. The gum trade coincided with the devistation of the Kauri forests, similar to our logging of giant redwoods in California, so resourceful entrepreneurs began searching for amber in buried ancient Kauri forests preserved in the peat bogs of northern New Zealand – thus the name gumdiggers. Gumdiggers Park is a site still in the condition it was in the late 1800’s. Underneath the site are at least two layers of ancient Kauri forests which were destroyed by natural disasters and preserved in the bog. As part of the tour you visit a perfectly preserved non-petrified Kauri tree that is carbon dated at over 100,000 years old.

An ancient Kauri tree, estimated to be over 100,000 years old. The layer over it is from a forest that is 40,000 years old.

Cape Reigna – The Top

At noon we arrived at Cape Reigna. Part of my vacation algorithm is to go to The Top of Things – this generally leads to pleasant surprises, and at the very least to a nice view. New Zealand, however, has a stunning gift for you when you get there. Beyond the lighthouse, the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide. Waves created by the prevailing Southerly winds arc around the top of the island and crash in a frothy seam. We were awed.

Cape Reigna, with the Tasman Sea (left) and Pacific Ocean (right) actively colliding.

Here’s a snippet of video I shot that will help:

We tried to get some pictures in the wind, and it was quite challenging. Sarah did a great job of shooting me. I was trying to compose a good shot with her and the colliding seas behind her, but the wind was just going crazy. I ended up firing off a bunch of shots and laughing. Sorry dear!

Us, at the Top of New Zealand

Sand Tobogganing!

The next stop was only about 15 minutes away at the top of 90 Mile Beach. Paul, our driver, slogged the huge bus through a river to get us to the biggest dune, then whipped out slick bottomed boogie boards for all of us.

Our Tour Bus and Sand Dune

Long hike up, short ride down. Completely worth it.

That is really fun. About two thirds of the way down the dune, I'm using my feet to steer a little bit. At the bottom is a very shallow river, if you keep enough speed you skip across it. Which I did, right into the far bank.

Survivor.

90 Mile Beach

The west coast of New Zealand is a 90 mile long beach that is completely undeveloped. It’s open to the public and you’re even allowed to drive on it. But not in a rental car, you fool! We rode the bus for an hour and a half down the beach with a view that rarely changed. It was serene and relaxing and beautiful to watch go by.

Our Bus, on 90 Mile Beach

Bus stop. We stretched our legs and waded in the Tasman Sea.

The Final Stretch

The bus stopped at “Ancient Kauri Kingdom” to wash the sand off and to provide busloads of people the opportunity to buy souvenirs. We also stopped for an early dinner at 4:30 at a Fish & Chips place in Mangonui.

That evening we went into the town of Paihia and had dessert at Alfresco’s. It was excellent and we were beat.

An interactive map of the day’s activities for your enjoyment:

View Top of NZ Tour in a larger map

With only one full day left in New Zealand we pondered the many things that were available to do and finally decided on taking a boat tour of the Bay of Islands. We drove into ‘town,’ had lunch and shopped around a bit. There was an Arts ‘n’ Crafts fair in full bloom because of the Princess Cruise that was doubling the size of the population for a day and we learned about what a lot of people’s ‘winter hobbies’ are.

Our ride. (The big yellow one.)

At 1:30 we launched on our biofueled, twin hull, three decks tall, bright yellow behemoth. Because it was still early in the season the boat was only about quarter full, which gave everyone great seats inside and out.

The first stop was Black Rocks, a set of small short islands created by lava. The low tide waterline is covered with green lipped mussels, which waiters had been trying to get us to eat since Wellington – evidently quite the delicacy.

Black Rocks

A beautiful cove on Motuarohia Island in the Bay of Islands, NZ. At high tide it becomes two islands.

Dolphins were spotted by another boat across the bay, so we raced over to see them. We found two boats in a small cove that were both swim-with-the-dolphins tours so we pulled in and watched. Sarah and I had decided not to do a dolphin swim tour today, but we both agreed that maybe we should have – it looked like a blast. The funniest part was the tour guides on the boats yelling “Look down!” to the swimmers. Evidently people float around on the surface looking across the water for fins and forget that any dolphin close enough to see will likely be swimming around underneath them. The bottlenose dolphin pod that was there had about a dozen members that were just as curious about the people. This form of swimming with the dolphins is just about being in the water observing them. The dolphins are wild, so there isn’t any petting going on and no rides while you hold their fins. They would jump occasionally and slap their tails on the water, and seemed to enjoy swimming around the people.

Swimmers and dolphins

The farthest point out on the boat tour is “Hole in the Rock.” Neither Sarah nor I were terribly excited about that part of the tour, we’ve seen plenty of rock arches before. When we first saw the hole it looked a lot like all the others. But the scale was very deceiving – the closer we got the bigger the hole got. A rock in the middle of the water offers no clues as to its size, and by the time we were in front of it there appeared to be enough room to motor a small boat through. Then our captain put the boat into reverse and started backing in. We were standing on the top deck of a three deck boat – easily twenty five feet off the water – with a radar pillar and antennae jutting high above us; it was clear that backing into the rock was a bad idea. Then the hole got bigger. And bigger. Within a couple minutes our boat was swallowed up by the Hole in the Rock, with plenty of headroom above us. The southern gap of the hole is narrower at the waterline, so there wasn’t comfortable clearance for us to go all the way through, but we sat inside for quite awhile marveling at the actual size and snapping hundreds of touristy pictures that will all fail to convey any sense of being there.

"Hole in the Rock." It looks small, but picture our entire three deck boat inside it with plenty of room to spare.

Aft view. We couldn't back in any further.

View over the bow. This conveys a bit of the scale. I would have needed two cameras to get it all in one shot.

The final stop was a port of call in Otehei Bay, where we disembarked for an hour to hike around. From the lookout points on the top of the hills you could enjoy more incredible views of the Bay of Islands.

Shore leave in Otehei Bay.

A majestic tree in Otehei Bay.

It was Friday 11/25 in New Zealand, but it was Thursday night back home – Thanksgiving. We had decided to celebrate Thanksgiving in NZ at the same real time that our families were celebrating back home. We had a wonderful dinner at Alfresco’s in Paihia. No turkey here, but we had fantastic New Zealand venison and lamb.

Thanksgiving Dinner - I had the venison.

Thanksgiving Dinner - Sarah had the lamb.

View Bay of Islands Tour in a larger map

Hawkes Bay Wine Tour

The Top of New Zealand Tour