New Zealand’s a place apart
Ican’t say I did much planning for my summer holiday. With the days before my week off disappearing in a flurry of deadlines and Christmas chaos, I booked two of the last remaining Northland properties within my budget on Airbnb: an off-grid cabin on a winding gravel road through what looked like the back of beyond, and a cheap motel in Mango¯ nui.
I knew nothing about Mango¯ nui other than it had a famous fish and chip shop and didn’t look that far from Cape Reinga on Google Maps, but I told myself that was all I needed to know.
The positive spin on my disorganisation was that I was setting out on a spontaneous voyage of discovery. The sole goal would be to make it to the top of the island I was born and raised on, for the first time. Everything else could be figured out en route.
The gravel road to the cabin, an hour’s drive inland from Whanga¯ rei Heads, was pretty hairy, with sheer dropoffs in parts, and slips the likes of which I’m sure my poor Prius never encountered when it was a Tokyo Uber.
Surrounded by an olive grove and native bush on the owners’ sprawling slice of under-explored rural paradise, it felt like a private retreat.
With no TV or wi-fi, I tuned into the hilarious reality show that was quail parents trying to keep their fluffy chicks in line, saw the sky go from blood-red to starspangled black as I read and barbecued on the deck, and fell asleep to the tune of moreporks’ mournful mating calls.
Consulting my trusty Lonely Planet guide for wellreviewed walks in Whanga¯ rei Heads the next morning, I followed Te Whara Track from a dune-backed surf beach to a cove with Fiji-white sand via a rocky pillar with what must be one of the best views in New Zealand.
It was the kind of natural lookout that would be cordoned off in some countries, requiring walkers to haul themselves up a near-vertical rock face.
I wasn’t going to attempt it until two trampers climbed down, grinning from ear to ear, and said it was well worth the short scramble. And right they were. Standing on the
Bream Head summit felt like standing on top of the world.
En route to Mango¯ nui, I tackled another hidden gem of a walk/rock climb to a viewpoint overlooking an islandstudded harbour that looked like Aotearoa’s answer to Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay. There were other times I felt like I was elsewhere in Southeast Asia as I travelled north: snorkelling in water like gold-green cellophane at Whale Bay, and tucking into a chicken stir fry at the Thai restaurant in Mango¯ nui which, despite being called ‘‘Kiwi chick’’, tasted very authentic.
The far Far North, though, was a place apart. Watching low cloud drift across the sun-bleached landscape like travelling ghosts as I approached Cape Reinga, it was easy to see why it holds such spiritual significance. (Ma¯ ori oral history dictates that spirits leap into the ocean here before making their way to Hawaiki.)
The fog rolled back in as I approached the lighthouse, albeit obscuring the place where the Pacific and Tasman seas collide, and ruining a classic photo opportunity in the process. But no matter. I’d finally made it to the tip of the Land of the Long White Cloud and, partly thanks to the long grey cloud I was standing in, was seeing it in a whole new light.
Brook Sabin shares his own voyage of discovery in the Bay of Plenty in this week’s cover story.
Turn to pages 34-35 to find out why he reckons it’s the North Island’s answer to Kaiko¯ ura.