West to East

Tuesday 4th March

I was speaking to one of the Maori guides yesterday about the two cultures.  It was really interesting and confirmed what I had seen, or thought I had seen.  He said that the Waitangi Treaty gave the settlers and the Maoris the same right in law, but of course that does not  mean that the socio-economic rights are the same. There seems to be a lot of wealth in NZ, but I have not seen it with the Maori people.  I am sure there are middle class Maoris and I know they have a large representation in parliament, but looking at some of the towns we have been through, they often look quite poor.  But then it is difficult looking in from the outside, in fact in some of the towns, many people look like they do not earn very much.  Full of shutdown shops and second hand stores.

So we left our camp in Opononi and stopped off at Hokianga Harbour and the viewpoint which  looked back over the the magnificent inlet.  It was still blowing a bit this morning, but had cleared a little to see the view.

We drove through the most beautiful forest, Waipoua Kauri Forest and stopped to see the 'King of the Forest' Tane Mahuta, a wonderful Kauri Tree.  It was a very windey road.  We then took a turn to Bayleys Beach, a lot of effort to get there and pretty wild surf! on to Dargaville for lunch and then across the middle to the East coast again.

Our original destination was Ruakaka, but we didn't like the look of the camp site, so carried on to Waipu Cove and tiny site.  We found a complete gem of a site in front of a nature reserve.

To get to the reserve and the beach you could either pull on a rope to bring over a small raft and ferry yourself across, which we did on the way out and on the way back we waded through the river.  The beach we walked onto was magnificent.