Kai Iwi Lakes

Paua

Te Pua reserve at Paua in the Parengarenga Harbour. On the opposite site you can see the white silica sand dunes which in the old days have been mined and shipped back to Whangarei for glass making.
The site is gated and you have to pay at the Te Kao store for the key.














A bit of yoga to break up the academic challenges.
A great fishing spot, but we still haven't managed to catch a decent feed - but we scored one from the neighbouring motorhome owner Larry.

A boat experiment

The exercise was to construct a boat which is selfpropelled, paddling with rubber band, motor, sail, steam,...anything goes. Boys decided for steam. A can of evaporated milk had to give its life and the Kaitaia Engineers sold some copper piping thin enough for the exercise.
Trailing the steam production was satisfactory.
German Opa and Oma rang up on Skype in the middle of construction. Lars is showing off the hull construction. After that, the boys constructed some outriggers for stability.
To make sure there is enough steam pressure to propell this big boat, they also decided to have a flame fuelled by Methylates Spirits instead of a candle, so the interior ripps were modified and a 'fuel container' constructed.
Back at Lake Ngatu, Lars poured some meth into the boat but spilled some into the boat. Instead of aborting the task, he lit the container anyway - and in the process rather more than just the fuel container. They had enough time to the boat propell before interior burnt out and the outriggers melted off.
The end result was a good laugh :-)

Lake Ngatu

Evening shot at Lake Ngatu, just north of Kaitaia
A very pleasant swim - the first decent one for this season. We could hear the frog chorus loud and clearly but the little fellows obviously where hiding out on the island.

We spent a lot of time here, 4 days whilst waiting for my Massey exam date at the beginning of November and towards the end of November whilst waiting for my laptop to be fixed.







Biking fun in the water and one way of getting the salt and sand off.









A boat experiment which offered a lot of learning. See separate blog

Gumdiggers park north of Kaitaia. Not the prescribed door height for today, but I guess the gum diggers wanted to keep the opening as small as possible to keep the heat in.
The gum, 45,000 years old, still has a strong smell.
The early settlers, apart from the British, were mainly Dalmatiens from the former Yugoslavia. To get to the gum, they had to dig through a layer of sandstone before they got the gum. To save themselves the hassle of digging more often than needed through the hard stuff, once they dug to a trunk, they dug along it to get to the gum.
The word gumboots actually came from that era. The British Wellingtons quickly got renamed gumboots, which is still the name used today.

Spirits Bay / Kapowairua

Spirits Bay is east of Cape Reinga and has a huge DOC camp.
Spirits Bay / Kapowairua with its cannon and little cemetry.
We have so many great panoramas of this place. The weather was a bit wild whilst we were there, but that just added to the excitement.
Spot the fist on the hill

Cape Reinga

Cape Reinga - the furthest north you can go by car (not the furthest spot north in NZ) Looks like we were there by ourselves but that is not the case. We were amazed at the number of people in November in the middle of the week. To get to the geocache, we actually came back another morning. Before 10am seems the time to come for photos.
The lighthouse used to operate a 1000 Watt bulb run by a diesel generator. Now it shines just as brightly on a 50 W bulb charged by some solar panels - Incredible!












90 Mile Beach seen from the top end.













Traffic jam on State Highway 1 south of Cape Reinga. I took photos like this 20 years ago when I came to NZ, but you can still strike it today :-)

Te Paki Sand Dunes

Be wary where you park your car - there are some quicksand patches. As it was, when we came back from some fun on the dunes, the tyres had sunk by about 8cm and before we even tried for the first time, we put the car into 4 wheel drive and all pushed. This way we had no problems.
Te Paki sand dunes are huge and you can hire a tobogan or boogie board to go down them. Somebody suggested cardboard boxes - but don't bother - too much friction.











So Andrew's mode of coming down was 'moon hopping'
The kids kept trying for a while before deciding to roll and tumble down the slope.

View from above to Tapotupotu Bay and DOC camp just east of Cape Reinga
A gentle bay, a hike up the hills and a river to kajak up provides for good entertainment. We even came across a wild pig whilst paddling upstream.





Anika went with dad to the top and later all three kids went up again to do a pencil drawing exercise.
Calm sandy bay but rough around the edges