McCaw
Road Trip
Auckland to Auckland
via Whangarei
Day three - Kaitaia to Cape Reinga and back (plus everything in between)
TEAM: Road Trip
POSTED: 21 Sep 2011
On day three (Tuesday 20th) we awoke to a beautiful sunny day. After receiving some information and advice from the great staff at Ahipara Holiday Park, we set off. Our plan was to get up to the Cape as early as possible and make any stops on the return leg. Accordingly, our first destination was the Te Paki sand dunes (about 15-odd km south of the Cape) for a little bit of sandboarding. The dunes were impressive and we rocketed down their slopes. After trying to shake the sand out of our clothes, we continued on to Cape Reinga itself. With the weather continuing to co-operate, the views from the Cape were breathtaking. It was a shame we couldn't take the campervan all the way to the lighthouse! After a prolonged photo-taking session, we started the trip back. We had been told (by Ahipara staff) that Rarawa Beach was spectacular. We found the turnoff at about 5pm and had the beach entirely to ourselves. It was indeed just as beautiful as we had been told. I even dipped my feet in the water and it wasn't even that cold! With the sun starting to go down to the west, we decided to see if we could make it to Ninety Mile Beach on the west coast for sunset. By this stage it was about 5:40 and we figured that we had about 15 or 20 mins left. We remembered an appropriate turnoff we had seen on the drive up earlier in the day but couldn't remember how far it was. We decided to go for it and raced against the clock. The turnoff was a little further than we had hoped but equally we had a little more time than we had estimated. We made it with perhaps 2 or 3 mins to spare and saw a brilliant Ninety Mile Beach sunset! We drove back to Kaitaia in darkness, where we had an excellent seafood meal at Beachcomber Restaurant. After a very exciting, fun and full day we headed back to Ahipara Holiday Park for the night.
