90 Mile Beach and the Cape

We're staying at a lodge in Houhora, it's actually more like a B & B. It's a beautiful house with huge vaulted ceilings and large windows. We woke up and had a lovely breakfast at 7:30. There was toast, cereal, poached eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and avocado. Delicious. Then we drove up to Cape Reinga. We got up to the Northernmost part of the Island and saw the lighthouse. The 800Pohutukawa tree was sticking off the edge of one of the cliffs. According to maori legend it's the leaping off point for their dead spirits. Also at the Cape you get to see the Tasman Sea from the West meeting with the Pacific Ocean from the East. The Tasman Sea is a teal color and the Pacific Ocean is a darker blue.

Then we drove to the Giant Sand Dunes of 90 mile beach. Leigh and I climbed up some of the dunes and slid down on boogie boards. Unfortunately, even on the extremely steep sand dunes, you don't slide that quickly and you start to slow down super fast. Before sliding down the dunes are intimidatingly steep. After climbing the dune and sliding down a few times we gave up and just sat on the dunes for a bit. We couldn't see the ocean because the dunes in front of us were so high. By the time we left, my shoes were filled with sand and my skin was covered in sand. My pant's cuffs were rolled up while we were at the dunes and when I unrolled them, tons of sand fell out. It was just like that scene from "The Great Escape" when they sneak dirt out from the escape holes in their pant legs. We left and went to buy some ice cream from a general store. It was awesome, we got waffle cones with boysenberry ice cream.

Then we went to Rarawa beach to see the silica sand beaches. They were crunchy. I took a

picture of my footprint because it reminded me of a tar heel.

After we got back to the Lodge, Bruce, the owner, took us down to 90 mile beach in his 4wd SUV. We had a fun chat and talked about shellfish and ambergris. Ambergris is to a spermwhale as a hairball is to a cat. It's apparently something spermwhales hack up and it's something lucky people can find once it has washed up on the shore. Bruce said perfume companies pay between $4-$8 per gram. They use it to neutralize the alcohol in the perfume. Some local dude once found a hunk that was worth $45,000. We drove up and down a bit of 90 mile beach and we didn't get stuck. It was low tide when we drove on the beach. Bruce said that between 6 and 12 cars per year get stuck and then buried once the tide comes in. The nearby forests house lots of wild horses. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see wild horses. They totally symbolize the wildness of Diane Lane's heart.

Also while driving from place to place there were a lot of sheep farms with giant pastures and Leigh kept seeing baby sheep, getting distracted and almost driving off the road. Good times.

It's almost 8 pm and I'm about to crash so peace out.

Cheers,

Molly

Also 90 mile beach is actually 65 miles long. They used horses to measure distances and knew that on average, it would take a horse a day to go 30 miles. However, they didn't take into account that moving through sand is more difficult than normal hills and is going to tire out the horse quicker. So it took the average horse 3 days to get down 90 mile beach even though it was actually only 55-65 miles long.