01.11.09 The Far North -Cape Reinga and Ninety Mile Beach

in the ancient Kauri forest


our Tank on the famous Ninety Mile Beach

After leaving our camping ground at Rarawa Beach on the eastern coast of the Far North peninsula we head up to the tip of mainland New Zealand, Cape Reinga. They're in the middle of tarmaccing the highway up here. It's obviously proving a more beaten track as campervans, motorbikes and full blown tour buses are increasingly making the trip up here to view the point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and witness the Moari souls make their final journey back to their Polynesian homeland, according to the ancient legend. We're impressed by the sight of the waves of the two bodies of water meeting, crashing and changing current and by the expansive views across the seas. It's pretty chilly so we beat a hasty retreat back to the cosy comfort of our van and head on to the entrance to the top of Ninety Mile Beach, Te Paki river bed. Greg's excited to try out his new motor on the legendary drag strip otherwise known as 90 mile beach so we spare no time in worrying whether we'll be able to get it off again (everyday cars are stranded in the sands) and switch to 4x4 mode. The Tank makes easy work of the sand and soon we're cruising down the stretch, surfers' waves on one side, dunes on the other. For a good while we're the only ones in sight and we decide to take advantage of the waves and try out our boogie boards for the first time. It's not long before we're bounding back ashore as the cold water is not as inviting as it looks but it's fun and, if we weren't awake before, we sure are now! At the exit from the beach the sand gets deeper and for a split second we're not sure if we'd make it to the concrete ramp, but, sure enough, the Tank survived. Our campsite at Kauri forest offers nightime guided walks to birdwatch for Kiwi so we sign ourselves up, have a quick shower, and meet up with our guide, Herb, at the office at 8. Herb drove us to the Kauri Walks car park and furnished us with torches for navugating the forest paths. He himself carried a powerful red light which he used to scan the undergrowth in search of the elusive Kiwi. He explained that Kiwis, because they cannot fly, have been preyed upon by stray and farmers' dogs, the unwanted possum (that was brought in from Australia) and rats who steal the eggs. Therefore the populations of the nation's bird have been in decline and every effort is now made to protect them from becoming extinct. The Trounson Kauri estate is a success story, now boasting 200 birds, due mostly to the use of predator traps around the area. The Kiwi is a nocturnal creature, sleeping 18 hours during the day in the small nests they make in the roots of trees, and coming out to feed at night. They pair off for life (lifespan 15 years) and, as a couple dominate a sizeable territory, calling out to each other as they search for food to let each other know where they are and to fend off any other Kiwis from their land. We are lucky enough to hear a pair calling to each other across our path but are unable to catch a glimpse of one. The nine of us tramping along on a gravel path has probably warned them of our presence. I am very excited however to see many glow-worms for the first time- flickering little lights in the upturned roots of a toppled kauri tree and the kauri trees themselves are a very impressive sight. They are ancient giants of the forest, the oldest one Tane Mahuta (Moari forest god) is in excess of 2,000 years old. They grow higher than the forest canopy in their first 2-300 years (on average 50 metres in height) then they start to fill out in the trunk and their girth can end up reaching anywhere up to 16 metres. They have an unfortunately shallow root system and can easily be toppled if damaged. Herb shows us a dead kauri which fell last year and explains that the tree is completely legally protected from being touched even when on the ground. It is illegal to remove any part of it but it can be a temptation to master carvers in the area who view the kauri wood as the most valuable for making into all sorts of furniture.

31.10.09 Boat Trip - Bay of Islands

We made an early start from our campground today to get to Russell for 9.30 (when our boat comes to pick us up). We do have time for a fresh pastry pie from the bakery and a chat with the baker herself. Most people around here are very friendly and don’t mind passing the time of day. It’s still quite sleepy here but come Christmas and the tourists will be flooding in. On our boat trip one of the highlights is to swim with dolphins, so we have our wetsuits ready to hand but, although our captain is in constant contact with all other boats in the area in case they spot anything, the dolphins aren’t coming out to play today. We do manage to catch a glimpse of a mother whale and her calf, swimming through the waters, which we’re told, is a much rarer sighting to make. It’s cold out on the water but the sun is beaming, showing all the many islands in their full glory. Most are privately owned but public access is allowed during daylight hours. There were many famous landings in these bays including Captain Cook and his ship, the Endeavour. Missionaries set up a church on one of the coastal embankments and this whole area was extremely significant in the relationship building between the Maori and the Brits. The historic treaty of Waitangi was signed just up the coast, in 1840, which was the agreement drawn up between the Maori and the British to decide on governmental power and land ownership. The Northland is the seat of the foundation of New Zealand as this is where all pioneers including the Polynesian Maori first landed. It subsequently has the most population of Maori in the whole of New Zealand.We jump ship at a little scenic reserve island for a stroll to the lookout from where an impressive panorama of the Bay of Islands can be viewed. Back on the boat we go on a wild dolphin chase but to no avail. Sometimes they don’t want to be found, or if they’re with their babies it’s not possible to get in the water with them anyway. So we head back to shore where we have a long drive in front of us up to the Far North because we want to make it to Cape Reinga tomorrow morning.

Tour of Northland 30.10.09

After saying goodbye to the young Dutch couple pitched up next to us, we headed towards Paihia, a small resort town on the Bay of Islands to see about booking a day out on a boat for tomorrow. The Bay of Islands is a kiwi tourist trap and also the Brits have bought up a lot of the local property to use as holiday homes. We reserve a spot for tomorrow’s Dolphin Spotter cruise and journey out of town, round the coast to a DOC site for tramping (walking). It is possible to walk your way up to the top of the peninsula, Cape Brett, and camp at a DOC trekking hut, but that takes 6 hours each way so we opt for a gentler 1 hour 15 min walk over the crest of the hill to the charming secluded beach of Whangamumu Bay where we can also see the remains of a whaling station. The concrete bunker style buildings were where the whale’s carcass was chopped up and the blubber, oil and meat extracted. It’s a much quieter place now and our only company is a few daytrippers who’ve paddled ashore from their yacht anchored in the bay. This is the only other way of accessing these bays aside from walking. Having completed our exertion for the day we speed off to a campsite further down the peninsula at Bland Bay, which is not as it’s name suggests. It’s a very pretty beach with picturesque craggy islands which are perfect against the setting sun.

Arrival in Auckland 24.10.09

Greg outside his new best friend, the 'Tank'


Shakespear regional Park- our first campsite

a massive yacht in Auckland harbour- the city of sails

24.10.09 - 26.10.09 Bamber House, Mount Eden, Auckland

27.10.09 Shakespear Regional Park Camping Ground

28.10.09 Otamure Beach DOC Camping Ground

29.10.09 Keri Keri Top 10 Campsite
We’ve been in New Zealand almost a week now and so far we’ve managed to buy a van, kit it out with a homemade bed and curtains and buy up all the camping gear we’ll need for our two month driving tour. This process has been greatly speeded up by the helpfulness of the kiwis we’ve come across so far. In particular, the girls Dawn and Claire who run Bamber House backpackers hostel in Mount Eden, Auckland. Admittedly they’re not kiwis, hailing instead from the UK, Glasgow and Yorkshire respectfully, but they were extremely helpful, going above and beyond to get us all the info we needed on buying a car, allowing us to use the hostel’s car park to create our new home from home and granting us a free night’s accommodation sleeping in our van on their premises. It’s been a hard slog, especially for Greg, who’s found a new vocation as a carpenter and general DIYer and we’ve spent a lot of money on the van getting it fitted up as we wanted it, but it’s been worth it because it’s a great little beast (we’ve named it Tank because of it’s 2 ton weight) and we should recoup our costs by selling it into the backpacker market when we’re done. We’ve come across dozens of young couples, singletons and groups of travellers hailing from all parts of the globe who buy themselves a second hand motor to tour in and it’s an extra bonus if it has sleeping quarters in the back. We’ve found New Zealand to be a pretty expensive destination as it’s almost 2 dollars to the pound at the moment. Only a year ago it was 3.5 but the country’s economy has been booming and, of course, ours has been in decline. In the supermarkets food is proving more expensive than the UK but we have found the quality of even basic brands to be better owing in part to the fact that the majority of produce is grown in New Zealand.We’re on the road now, touring the North Island, north of Auckland, heading up to the top - Cape Reinga. The eastern coast has so far been impressive for its beaches but unfortunately the Spring temperatures are not quite inviting enough for us to try swimming. We have however, recently purchased ¾ length wetsuits and foam boogie boards (small surf boards) so we have no excuse not to try some of the famous surfers beaches.

Easter Island 2

a moai not yet removed from the volcano quarry where it was made


Tongariki moais - 15 in total which have been re-erected


cave we clambered through

There are numerous underground caves near the west coast of the island, previously inhabited by the Rapa Nui, which can be seen from the remainder of many small walls left inside. There are still islanders today who remember times before the arrival of the first aeroplanes. They speak of being brought up in the caves, fetching water daily from the freshwater lake in the volcano crater. They have a history of being persecuted by the people who arrived after the explorers, including Peruvian slave traders who kidnapped many of them and later, a sheep farming company who took over the land surrounding Hanga Roa village, hemming the last of the population in. Many also died when smallpox and TB were brought to the island by continentals. In the 19^th century only 111 natives remained. Since 1963, when the island was granted freedom, the population has significantly recovered and modern day life on the island is different to how it was only a generation before. Three aeroplanes daily bring tourists with money to spend in the local community, on souvenirs of hand carved statues and shell necklaces and hiring either cars, scooters or quads to tour the sites. The younger Rapa Nui generation is split between those who remain and those who leave for the continent, although when asked most would admit to wanting to return to the island at some point. There is a strong connection with the ancestral history and culture and a pride in being part of the most isolated community on earth. We explore the caves, amazed at the fact we can walk 200 metres underground through pitch black tunnels. We head back to the pretty beach at Anakena for a last dip in the huge waves of the Pacific Ocean before cooking our last meal in the Mihinoa Camping Hostel and chatting with some fellow travellers who’ve just been to New Zealand and only had great things to say about it.

18.10.09 - 21.10.09 Easter Island (Rapa Nui) - 4,000km off the coast of Chile

The aeroplanes coming to Easter Island have to make a severe descent and be very harsh on the brakes when they land because of the short runway. It runs from one side of the island to the other but still seems much shorter than your average runway. We’re greeted with the customary fresh flower garland and, together with the very warm humidity, we realise we are indeed on a tropical South Pacific island. However, the surrounding landscape appears to be more reminiscent of Fife than Tahiti. The rolling green hills fall away to rocky beaches and there’s no real sign of any tropical vegetation, save for a few palm trees dotted here and there. In fact nettles grow aplenty, including bright purple thistles, which are really bizarre when you see them growing right next to a Moai statue, so many miles from their home country, Scotland.

The island is populated by almost 4,000 inhabitants plus about the same again in horses. They seem to be the preferred livestock, although we can’t work out what purpose they might serve. There are some cows, but no sheep. Kestrels have the skies pretty much to themselves. I’ve seen no evidence of any small furry creatures, like rabbits or rodents and, for some bizarre reason, there seem to be a lot of woodlice. Funny, seeing as one of the main historical issues of the island is that the natives completely deforested it, causing many problems to their sustainment. Nowadays, groves of eucalypts are flourishing along with generic deciduous and they’re attempting to re-introduce the Toromiro tree, which is currently extinct in the wild and was one of the species which suffered from the heavy handedness of the Rapa Nui.

We hire a Daihatsu Terios to tour the island for our 3 day stay and soon realise that the distances on the map are much shorter than they look. It’s possible to drive the full length of the island in just over 20 minutes- 20kms. We start out on the road to the eastern coast, which is a secondary road with many potholes. Greg’s driving gets increasingly more skilled as he becomes adept at navigating through them. We follow the morning tour bus as it makes it’s stops to view the toppled Moai and Ahu (platforms). We soon appreciate however that there are sites which the tour bus either can’t make it to or doesn’t have time on it’s schedule, so it is possible to be the only ones looking at these ancient monuments.

Rapa Nui was discovered by a group of Polynesian pioneers (possibly from the Marquesa Islands, 1,500km to the west) attempting to form a colony and harvest the land. It is unknown exactly when this was but it could’ve been any time from the 8^th century to the 14^th century AD. They developed into a strictly spiritual culture who built large stone statues, Moai, as gifts to appease their gods. As the years passed these Moai became larger in size, such were the workers pressed by the Akiri, or king of the island, to supersede the previous examples. Unfortunately, for the Rapa Nui, this stone carving culture became obsessive, to the detriment of all else on the island, including the population’s ability to feed itself. Logs were required for the gigantic statues to be rolled into position, so all the trees were cut down. Farmers were conscripted to join the ranks and help with the building, letting their crops go to waste and die, and the whole situation got to the point where it was critical that they alter the way they were living or they would not survive. A new idea came in the form of the Birdman cult, wherein, at the beginning of Spring, when the migratory Sooty Tern would come to nest on the tiny islands of the south coast, the strongest swimmers of each tribe on the island would have to attempt the harsh Pacific waters to collect the first egg of the season. This feat represented fertility for the coming season, and would determine who would be crowned Birdman for the next year, but again caused the virtual extinction of the birds on the island because of the destruction of their nests and their habitat. So, the essence of the Rapa Nui people was the lack of respect they had for the delicate ecosystem of their island and the mass destruction they caused of it. But, it can be said that the majority of the peoples believed that what they were doing would lead to problems, however, they were ruled by the Akiri who frightened them into expending all their energies in the quarries chipping and carving at the rock, to make the biggest Moai ever seen. He told them stories that every other land mass in the ocean had sunk due to lack of belief in the gods and, if they were not careful, their island would sink too. It must’ve been a strange feeling to think you were the only people in the world, not knowing whether anything else was beyond that endless horizon of nothingness.

This isolation also kept them safe however and it was only when explorers and missionaries came to the island in the 18^th century that a lot of the population was lost to smallpox and TB.

We can recognise most of the inhabitants of the island’s only village, Hanga Roa, as being directly descended from the Rapa Nui, from their facial features and habit of growing their fuzzy black hair very long. An official Rapa Nui language is still spoken and they take their cultural identity very seriously.

We are impressed by the Moai design, each one in it’s own way, different from the last, and also by the natural beauty of the island with it’s volcanic rock formations and crashing turquoise waves of the vast Pacific.

15.10.09 - 16.10.09 Santiago de Chile

images from the exhibition we visited- 'Inca' products and Catholicism issues.

great fountain at one of the city's parks

view of Santiago from the top of the funicular

Santiago is wealthy with trendsetters and well-dressed business people taking the lead. The city is built up but has also very successfully retained it’s green spaces, which are constantly patrolled by guards to prevent any undue behaviour. We become aware that the parks tend to generally be used by young couples smooching on benches, out of the condemning gaze of their parents most probably. The parks are very pretty, particularly the Santa Lucia city park which has a magnificent fountain and tower esplanade from where a great view of the city can be enjoyed. We also take a trip up the funicular railway to one of the city’s hills, upon which sits an immense statue to the Virgin Mary and an open air church with wooden pews, where a very atmospheric mass must take place every Sunday. There is much evidence of Catholicism still playing a very important part in peoples’ lives in Chile and, in fact, in all the South American countries we’ve visited. We take in a revealing exhibition at the contemporary wing of the Belles Artes Museo in which new South American painters addressed issues of sexuality alongside Catholicism, plus there was a display of Inca-related product packaging. In other words, the artist has collected as many product advertising using ‘Inca’ as a brand name to emphasise quality, which is highly amusing to us.

And this ends our South American adventure. We’re off to Easter Island tomorrow, leaving behind the Latin American peoples, histories and cultures we’ve encountered here, to taste some island living, then it’s on to the down under, English speaking nation of New Zealand!