Destination Orewa Beach, Auckland, New ZealandOrewa
Heading south on the No-name
curvy road
We are heading south today – and
saw the sun over the ocean, saw the nice green – beautiful clouds. We were driving
a no-name road with lots and lots of curves, very remote and not a lot of
people living here – but it was super beautiful with amazing hills and forest.
Nearly like in a fairytale country: that is what we call a scenic drive. And
nearly each curve has a sign and it indicates on how fast you can drive around
it – which also shows you on how tight the curve is from 25-35-45-55-65-75-85
we saw and drove it all. And a lot of the bridges here are single-lane, so it’s
important to know who has the right of way (yes there are signs)
Breakfast at Broadway
After hours of driving, we thought
it is soon time for breakfast and see there a sign comes with Picnic tables –
we can’t believe it, it is super cute and perfect for us. Now we are ready to
continue on until we finally arrive back on SH1. I may should mention we
decided not to see the largest Kauri Tree as this would add to our already long
driving day an extra hour or more of drive which we thought will be too much.
An old tunnel & an old
church
We did make two short stops, once
we saw a tunnel near the road and checked it out it is from 1926 and outside
are also some nice Maori carvings. Soon
after we came by a really cute old wooden church and stop to check it out too.
And as we started with mostly
sunny blue sky we are suddenly in a downpour – only to be soon after back with
the blue sky…. Weird weather. And later-on on our trip we heard about the
Cyclone in 2023 and there are a lot of roads where the side is broken off (and here
on the little roads you often don’t have much on the sides either) and a big
part of SH 1 is closed – that is why we did a lot of small backroads.
We take the direct route like
everyone else
We are back through Kawakawa (and
no we didn’t stop at the toilets), but we are now heading towards Whangarei and
there are definitely more people on the road – guess everyone drives home today
as it is Monday of a long weekend. Also, I may should mention – as where New
Zealand is the country of sheep we are seeing a lot of happy cows in the green
grass.
Viewpoint on Whangarei head
We missed it on the way up, so it
is a good thing we drive here again and now we can enjoy the amazing views over
to Whangarei head it is super spectacular: and yes we were all the way at the other
end.
And then the traffic slows down - like
really slow – and for several kilometers we are all go super slow …. It is
nearly like a rush hour.
Big Trees at Parry Kauri Park
- The McKinney Kauri which is around 800 years old, has a girth of 7.62m and the first limb is after 11 m (no climbing up here) – by the way McKinney was a reverend here
- On the Simpson tree: the 600 year old – we could see some of the gum on the tree trunk fairly high up: as the first limb is at 15m
We decided to drive the old SH1
and not the new SH1-toll road, and this brings us by the Parry Kauri Park, when
Gine sees the sign, she said Paul we need to stop here, we skipped it on the
way up. And that is what we did, we saw here a super old logging wagon with a
Kauri tree trunk on it (1.3m in Diameter and weighs around 5 tons – in the old
days 14 bullocks would have been needed to pull it), as well we checked out two
very old Kauri trees a 800 year old one and a 600 year old one. That is when
Paul said I’m sure glad we didn’t do a detour to look at one tree!! (I may
should mention that Tana Mahuta is 2000 years old and is nearly 4x the size of
those ones and it is New Zealand’s largest tree and one of the largest trees in
the world)
Close to the Beach in Orewa
And then we approach the ocean
again – it looks so amazing. Our Motel is only one block from the ocean and
super nice with a little patio outside our room. First we have coffee and then
it is time to head to the beach.
An Afternoon at the long beach
Sun shine, some wind so it doesn’t
feel too hot, an endless long beach: yes Orewa is known for it’s 3 km long
beach (which is its main attraction of the town) and we love it –after all this
driving we enjoy it!! Walking along the beach on the sand, having the warm
water around our feet – the clouds mirroring in the water coming in – it is
super pretty. And we love it.
We have Pizza
We discovered that a small pizza
is enough and cheaper than sometimes to cook and buy all the ingredients as we
can’t bring too much along. And so tonight we have another super amazing Pizza
– I think that is one of the best ones we had.
Time to relax after all that sun
soaking up and all that driving. Did I mention we were 6 hours on
the road today.
2025-05-23