Weekend in Bay of Island " Bay of Islands Lodge, Port Opua, NZ

Here I am in the north lands of New Zealand. Beautiful country. This area of NZ is in the sub-tropics. After this, I will be heading south and eventually make it to the sub-arctic area of NZ! The Bay of islands is distinguished by hundreds of islands and land preserves. Much of the land rights are Maori but it is convoluted as to what that really means. I took a flight to the northern point of NZ where the Pacific meets the Tasman sea. An ocean is defined as a body of water between continents and a see is defined as one between land masses. I expected some thing more than relatively calm waters where they met but I was disappointed. What I got instead was some Maori folklore. The very tip of the island has a restricted area which is a big rock with a tree growing put of it. I have a decent picture. What that doesnt show is that there is a cave below. Maori visit this place when they are dying. Their soul is to rest there for 3 days while they are mourned. From there, it travels to the 3 kings islands distantly offshore from that spot before then going on to the Maori version of heaven. The whole area is stark and wind swept. There are almost no settlements or farms here. The closest supermarket is 100km away and the closest hospital 300km away. People who do live up here live off the land. There are no real roads which is why I took the flight. You can get up there by car by driving on the beach during low tide. Beaches are recognized as official state highways here! I also got a chance to try some surfing. Yeah right, before you all get your undies in a bunch, it was SAND surfing. There are these incredible dunes here. They tower over you. Its strange, looking at them I expect these monuments to dissipate in the wind but they are fixtures. The guide had the plastic seats that you use to surf down the side of the dunes. Quite entertaining in the moment but remember its sand AKA an abrasive and you don't go very fast. The real kicker here is you have to climb the dunes in order to ride em. Three climbs exhausted me LOL.

The Plane (looks like Vieques)

Maori legend states that the whole North island was fished out of the sea, This is the fish-hook that nabbed the island !!!!

Lighthouse on the very tip of the north island


pilots view

signage not sure you can make that out? its on the very tip of the island with distances etc

This tree marks the cave on the northenmost rock out cropping that the Maori use for their death rituals


I have lots more picture. problem is the bandwith here is pathetic. takes almost 5 minutes a photo so if I ever get more bandwidth ill upload lots of more pix.

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