Seven days touring the Northlands and we only scratch the surface - Part I

Kia ora this fine Friday morning from New Zealand. Marshall is at school (his fourth day), Karen is at work, and I am at home writing our blog. It's a rough life but someone has to lead it.

In our last blog I wrote that we were going on a week long touring/camping trip of the Northlands (or Far North) of New Zealand. The Northlands can be considered the area on north of Auckland. We left on Thursday, January 26th and returned on Wednesday, February 1. The following is a brief intinerary our trip:

Part I
Thursday, Jan. 26 - Trounson Kauri Park
Friday, Jan. 27 - Trounson Kauri Park and Waipoua Kauri Forest
Part II
Saturday, Jan. 28 - 90 Mile Beach and Te Paki Recreation Reserve (giant sand dunes)
Sunday, Jan. 29 - Cape Reinga and Matauri Bay
Monday, Jan. 30 - Matauri Bay and Mimiwhangata Campground
Tuesday, Jan. 31 - Poor Knights Island
Wednesday, Feb. 1 - Whangerei, Waipu Beach, and home

Thursday night - We see a wild Kiwi!

I am getting ahead of myself, but on Thursday night, Marshall and I went on a guided evening nature walk and had the wonderful and rare good fortune to see a Northern brown kiwi. What a thrill. Marshall was really excited and talked about it for a long time. If that doesn't make you want to read on, nothing will.

We left Hamilton around 2 in the afternoon, drove north through Auckland, and then west along the Kauri Coast. Again, what looked and sounded like a reasonable drive turned into a 4.5 hour slog. We got held up by some really bad traffic in Auckland. As an aside, Auckland and region has about 1.4 million people. (The total population of NZ is around 4.4 million people. Hamilton and area where we live is a little over 200,000.) That afternoon it seemed like about 1 million Aucklanders were on the main highway through their city.

For all you urban planners out there, take note of Auckland as an example of how not to locate or design a city. It is crowded between two big harbours at one of the narrowest parts of the north island. This basically means there is room for only one "express"way north-south through the city. I would not want to deal with it every day.

We arrived at our campground around 7:30, quickly set up our tent, and then Marshall and I (Karen was not feeling great, too bad) met up with our guide for our evening nature walk through Trounson Kauri Park - there were 10 of us on the walk. We had an excellent evening. Our guide Sarah was really good/informative and was able to describe many of the different types of trees in the park even though it was getting dark.

Trounson is 450 hectares and is a "mainland island". The NZ Dept. of Conservation (DOC) has established areas around the country that they fence in, try and remove all the predators, and let the area revert to a native NZ landscape/ecosystem. So, they are islands of wild/natural NZ surrounded by very human-modified lands--farms, urban areas, predators, etc. Sarah said the fence around Trounson needs work and predators, particularly possums, are still getting into the park. These islands are refuges for NZ birds like the kiwi. (If you are like Marshall, your are probably thinking as he was at the start of the tour, "Finally! Enough talk about trees and parks, let's go looking for kiwis.)

We got to the park around 8:45, were given some details about the park and kiwis, and then set off along the trial around 9:00. Kiwis don't come out until after dark so there was no point going in earlier. Kiwi calls are very loud and can carry a long way. About 20 minutes into our walk we (Sarah) heard a male kiwi call, but it was behind us. Essentially at the same time, she and I (I am not sure about the others in our group), heard a scuffling in the bush right near the trail. If you remember my earlier write-up about kiwi birds, they are always probing the ground looking for insects. Although we could not hear the kiwis at the Otorohanga kiwi house as they were behind glass, I imagined they would make a lot of noise as they worked their way along the forest floor. I was right.  

Sarah used a red-light flashlight and after a bit of searching found the kiwi close to the trail. It was a small one, only about 4 months old. (Northern brown kiwis can lay and hatch several chicks a year, so they kick the young kiwis out at abou 2-3 months. If you remember that Northern brown kiwis can live up to 40 years, that is not a lot of parental care. Other kiwi species will care for their chicks for up to a year.) Once the little kiwi sensed/knew it had been spotted it started running. First it ran beside the boardwalk we were on, then jumped on top of it, went to the other side, then started zig-zagging through the bush beside it for a bit. In the end, we observed it for about 30 seconds. Like we saw at the kiwi house, kiwis can run fast when they want to. We were unbelievably lucky. Most people, including NZers, do not ever see a wild kiwi. Awesome and a big highlight of our time in New Zealand for Marshall and I. We felt bad that Karen missed it. After our walk we found a bunch of glow worms in our campground and eels, and some big ones, in the stream by the campground.

A few more notes about why kiwis are rare. Basically, other animals like to kill them or eat their eggs. One dog got into a kiwi park and killed 500 kiwis in 2 weeks. Kiwis have a musky odor that is really attractive to dogs. Plus, because they don't fly, they don't have much of a breast bone, so as Sarah said, one bite usually kills the kiwi. At one point there were an estimated 12 million kiwi birds in NZ. Now there are concerns they will be extinct from the mainland of NZ by around 2050. A lot of campgrounds and trails do not allow dogs to stay in or walk on them.

Other animals like possums like to eat their eggs and NZ is overrun with possums. If I remember correctly, they trap possums trying to get into Trounson and over a short period of time (two weeks ??) trapped 200 possums. Possums were brought over from Australia (they are different from N. American opossums) to create a fur industry. Today their fur is still valued, but their biggest purpose presently in NZ appears to living, or once-living, speedbumps. Turning them into road kill is considered a good thing to do.

Campground rating - We stayed in six different campgrounds during our trip and one thing we started to do after the third night was rate the campgrounds. Karen didn't really like this game but Marshall could talk about them for hours, although he also liked to talk about what our favourite part of the day, and later, the trip was. He developed a rough scale (1-5) for three categories: scenery, campground quality, and noisiness.

Here we stayed at Kauri Coast Top 10 Holiday Park - a private campground. It scored very highly, 3.5, 5, and 4. Actually, it was campground hotel. It had a full kitchen for guests, BBQ, tv and computer (pay) lounge, hot shower, trampoline, zip line for kids, etc. All we did was set up and sleep in our tent. The real highlight for Marshall was the camprgound had a large stream running through it with a deep swimming hole, complete with rustic diving board, swinging ropes, and inner tubes. He and I spent a fun 45 minutes or so in it on Friday morning. Anyway, this campground was nothing like I had experienced before. The only thing was that there were no private sites - you set your tent up out the open next to other peoples' tents. This is common throughout NZ and apprarently Europe as well. Karen has had students from Europe who are amazed at Canadian campgrounds. Probably Marshall's favourite campground of the trip.

Friday - We visit the "Lord of the Forest" and learn how short our lives are

After packing up and going for our swim, we took Karen to Trounson Kauri Park. The park has a really nice 45 minute trail through it that takes you past a number of cool NZ trees and ferns, small streams, etc. It is a well-laid out and peaceful trail. While you are on it, you really get a sense of the forest. How thick and full it is, although at the same time not dark or oppressive. We all really enjoyed this park and would recommend it.

After Trounson, we drove to Waipoua Forest. What is special about Waipoua Forest is it is the largest remaining virgin Kauri forest in New Zealand. What is special about kauri trees is they are an ancient species of coniferous tree dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. Like the tuatara reptile, kauri trees and podocarp trees (a different family of ancient coniferous trees found in NZ) are the remnants of plant and animal communities that inhabited Gondwana. Gondwana was the southern super-continent that broke up into continents like Antarctica and Australia and countries like New Zealand. Because of NZ's isolation, ancient species were able to survive and thrive here. In most of the rest of the world, kauri and podocorp forests have been replaced by modern coniferous and broad-leafed forests. There are "newer"  trees in NZ as well, but kauri trees have adapted to co-exist with them. I am not sure why they didn't do so well in other parts of the world.

Trounson Park also has kauri trees. Much of Trounson was gifted to the NZ govt by a Mr. Trounson.

Why people are fascinated by kauri trees is that individual trees can be several thousand years old and grow to immense proportions. They are tall--around 50 metres (165 feet), but not overwhelmingly tall. What they are are is wide. Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest - Waipoua) has a circumfrence of around 14 metres, or a diameter of roughly 4.5 metres (14.5 feet). Bigger trees have been recorded. Because they live such a long time, kauri trees have a neat adaptation. The older trees shed their bark over a six-year cycle. This means any parasitic plants growing on them fall to the ground with the sloughed off bark. If they didn't, then after a 1000 years kauir trees would be covered with a green carpet sucking nutrients out of them.

Lord of the Forest

This is a picture of us standing in front of Tane Mahuta. Although we are not right against the trunk of the tree, it gives you an idea of how big it is. When you stand close to one and recognize how old it is, you can't help but feel small. As Marshall said, not a bad small (insignificant), just that you are part of something much bigger. I would describe it as humbling.

Kauri forests once covered much of the Northlands and reached down to around Hamilton. It is estimated there is now only 4% of uncut forest left in small pockets (Wikipedia).  They were heavily logged for several reasons. Kauri trees have very straight trunks with no branches except for the crown of the tree and its wood is light and resitant to rot. This makes them excellent trees for ship building, including as masts. Its outer wood also has a beautiful grain that was popular for building furniture. The Maori burned kauri forests to clear land. Kauri isn't logged anymore. Instead they mine it from swamps. Old kauri forests were covered by swamps, which the trees fell into. Now they dig up these "Swamp kauri" trees, dry out the wood and use it to build furniture and other stuff. Swamp kauri is around 40,000 to 50,000 years old.

I was the one who most anticipated going to Waipoua and in the end I was disappointed. Not with the kauri trees themselves, they are awe-inspiring, just with the forest experience. The big kauri trees that you visited were at the end of short trails that you drove to. There was little signage explaining other parts of the forest, etc. It all felt like it was geared towards being a tourist vs. experiencing the forest. However, much of this has to do with the kauri trees themselves. They feed through fine roots that are close to the soil surface. These roots are very fragile and easily damaged by being walked on. You are supposed to stick to the trail to avoid damaging the roots. All the big trees are surrounded by fences. Also, kauri trees are now suffering from a disease, "kauri die-back". It can be transferred from place to place on people's shoes (you wash your shoes with a special solution going into and coming out of Waipoua). Given all of this, I understand why access to kauri forests needs to and should be restricted, but the selfish side of me wanted something more.

Campground rating - After Waipoua, we drove another long drive to Ahipara, a town at the southern end of 90 Mile Beach. We stayed at the Ahipara Holiday Park, another private campground, which is about a 10 minute walk from the beach. Although nice, it did not score as high on Marshall's list: scenery - 2.5, campground quality - 3.5 (a little more well-used, no swimming except at beach), and noisiness (4). The one nice thing is that is stopped raining about an hour before we arrived at the campground, after raining off and on, sometimes hard, all day. We went to bed and awoke to clear skies. The rain on Friday was our only rain of the week.