Goats & Trees: Just Another Week in New Zealand

From Ahipara we headed south, through even more hilly and windy roads, to a tiny town called Opononi. The only highlight of the caravan park here was that it had GOATS – yes, goats. They had five goats all strategically tied up to “mow” the lawns with their eating habits. Also, all the goats were named Brad. Craig was like a kid in a candy store, getting his picture taken with them and their beards.

After a night there we did a short hour-long “tramp” (that’s New Zealand for “hike”) and drove through the Waipoua Forest, where some of New Zealand’s oldest and biggest trees are found. To quote our Lonely Planet, “this is one for the chubby chasers of the tree-hugging fraternity.” We knew we had to see the giant, ancient kauri trees, but weren’t expecting much. But WHOA – 2000-year-old trees are pretty awe-inspiring to see. The coolest one, Tane Mahuta (named after the Maori forest god), is the largest kauri tree alive. He stands at 51m tall with a 13.8m girth. The pictures we took do no justice to the size of it – we couldn’t even get close enough to touch it, since they are trying to protect the shallow roots that keep the monster in the ground. We were able to get our pictures taken with Yakas, the seventh-largest kauri tree.

Having gotten our fill of big trees, next on our agenda was to visit another wine region just north of Auckland. We stayed a few nights at a caravan park in a cute town called Sandspit. Not to be outdone by a place that has goats, this place had four donkeys and a deaf dog. The donkeys were in a pen but the dog had the run of the park. The office, TV room, games room, and other buildings had old fake store fronts and lots of vintage paraphernalia everywhere, so it kind of felt like we were at a pioneer village/museum. We visited three wineries in the Matakana region here, and had a scrumptious lunch at the Ransom Vineyard – check out the spread:

Now we feel we have pretty much seen everything there is to see north of Auckland. Some of the towns were ghost towns at this point in the year, and we are looking forward to rejoining civilization. After a few weeks driving and tramping lots, we are booked in to a caravan park for a few nights that has a hot -mineral pool. Spending a few nights soaking in 38-degree water will make the winter weather a bit more bearable.

Andrea has been pleased to discover there is a plethora of teaching work here. After registering with a placement agency, she realized she could pick up a long-term occasional teaching position super easily. Lots of schools were looking for someone to teach for terms 3 and 4 (July 20 – mid-December), but she does not want that level of commitment or responsibility yet. We figure we will boomerang back to Auckland for a few weeks at a time every so often so she can supply teach for a week or two, and then go back out travelling. But who knows?

As a side note: we’re not sure we will complain about gas prices back home ever again. Who knows what gas is sitting at back in Canada, but here we’ve paid between $1.60 to $1.88/L. Even converting from New Zealand to Canadian dollars, this still sits at about $1.20/L. With how hilly and windy the roads have been, our van gets the amazing mileage of about 9km/L of fuel. Ouch.