Far, far north …

… may be something of a contradiction considering we are in one of the southernmost nations in the world, but the far, far north is where Kiwis name the region we’ve been exploring for the past couple of weeks.

This is the height of the holiday season in NZ, and so we couldn’t get a campervan until January 11th. This left us stranded from December 28th: so we did what Team Pritchard seem always to do in this situation – we hired a car! Car number 4, in what was supposed to be an ecologically friendly year. Hey ho. Auckland is a fantastic city, one of our favourites so far, but even so, we couldn’t face two weeks there. And so we fostered DEJ, a beat up old boy who needed a loving family for a while. One of the great things about this country is how close everything is: within 20 minutes of driving we were right out of Auckland and into beautiful rolling hills and coastline. There is hardly anyone here, with only 4 million in the whole country (though its bigger than the UK) of which 1.3 million squeeze into Auckland. The towns are small, rural, filled with old wooden houses and very little of the blanket homogenisation of high streets we’re sadly getting so used to in the UK and US. Few chains here: instead loads of individual and specialised shops, cafes and restaurants. The same for places to stay – although there are a few Best Westerns in the bigger tourist places, most are little guest houses, independent backpackers, holiday parks and motels. The word motel takes on a new meaning down here. Far from seedy little parking lots with prefab units containing a bed and little else, Kiwis have created something of an artform! Each room is like an apartment, some with several rooms and invariably a kitchen, Sky TV and spa pools. OK so they are pricier than their American namesakes, but some have been just fantastic places to stay.

We wound our way up the east coast and the Pacific to the very top, down the west coast along the Tasman Sea, and pretty much everywhere in between. Driving no more than 2 hours a day we managed to cover the whole region in our two weeks, with the sun smiling down on us most of the time and some absolutely beautiful coastline to explore. Our first stop was the little town of Leigh, perched over the sea and just a couple of miles from the fantastic Goat Island beach. Got to explain the name, really! When the whalers and traders first came to this part of the world in the 1800s, they left livestock dotted on different islands to breed and run free, so they had a source of fresh meat whenever they passed back through. No prizes for guessing what they left on Goat Island, or indeed nearby Hen and Chicken Islands!

Goat Island lies just off the beach, and is a marine reserve, which means the wee fishies have been left alone for the last twenty years or so to make a lot of baby fishies. Snappers especially have made it their stomping ground, and we saw loads, as we went out on our first glass bottomed boat. Snappers come right up to the glass to have a good peak, and the visibility was amazing, at over 10 metres. It was fun, and we had a bit of a thrill when a diver with no flag appeared right under the glass. We were all quite entertained until we saw the skippers face and heard his resulting language! A somewhat heated exchange followed as the skipper reminded the diver of the need for a flag to avoid running him over with those nicely sharp propellers. But the truly great bit happened as we landed back on the beach … someone suddenly called out “dolphin!!” and true enough, about 30 feet offshore we saw a couple leaping about, doing full breaches and generally having a whale (har har) of a time. The captain, after a moments thought, swung the boat round and we headed straight for them to loud cheers! It was spectacular, watching them roll and play, jump and dive, all round the boat, and Joe even managed to capture some of it on video: if not tons of the dolphins, certainly of the atmosphere and the noise we were making! Joe remarked how it really reminded us of how very special and rare it is: dolphins don’t just perform on cue, every time you go out, instead, if you’re lucky, you might just catch a glimpse at the very end of a trip and be fortunate enough to get back out to see them. Our second attempt at dolphin viewing, just up the coast in Paihia, reinforced that further. 4 hours of searching in a speedboat when they’d SWUM with them that morning, and absolutely not a fin to show for it!