Spirits Bay

We packed up our site on Monday morning. It took us all morning! It is suprising how spread out and settled in we become after staying in one place for nearly two weeks. Finally, shortly after noon we said goodbye to Maitai Bay and headed for a chore-stop in Kaitaia. We had a large load of washing to do, lunch to have, groceries to buy, a gas bottle to fill, insect defence arsenal to stockpile, and black and gray water tanks to empty. Everything went smoothly except dumping the waste from the caravan. The car park where the waste facility is located was being resurfaced, which meant the dump point was slightly higher than the caravan outlet, but not only that, the position and shape of the curb in relation the dump point was such that I was never going to get the caravan close enough without damage. I'm getting pretty good at backing the caravan now, but that dump station was beyond me. We checked on our map where else we could go to dump. There are two camp grounds with waste dumping facilities on the road to Cape Reinga, so we decided to stop at one of those and pay the dumping fee. We stopped at the second, just over 40km north of Kaitaia, but they had a policy of no dumping unless you stayed the night. Everyone up there has septic tanks, apparently, so understandably no one likes to let passers-by dump waste. We were getting somewhat concerned at this point that we would have no where to dump our poo and wee so we turned back down the road for 5 minutes to the first campground hoping that we could make them an offer. Fortunately they were happy to take our waste for $5, and let us fill our freshwater for another $5. By this time it was early evening, and we still had quite a bit of travelling ahead of us. In particular, the road in to Spirits bay is a winding, unsealed, washer-boarded track. I quite like driving on that sort of road, but the rest of the family weren't too keen, and it was the end of the day. Finally, just on sunset at about 8pm, we arrived at the DOC campground at Spirits Bay. To the delight of Esther and Abigail, we chose a site just opposite the river from a field of horses (including three young foals). We quickly pitched the tents and got set up for the evening, and settled in to a good night's sleep.

Tuesday morning dawned clear and warm. James and I wandered off to explore the beach - the white sand curved to the left for a number of miles towards Cape Reinga, visible in the distance. To the right was a small island and bay, ending abruptly in steep bush and grass covered hills. There was a half decomposed body of a whale lying a short ditance away on the beach, much to the interest of James, and in our wandering spotted a few dead penguins washed up also. Little blue penguins, I think. After lunch James and I left the girls to watch a recorded TV program (the Austalian X-Factor final) and headed for the beach. It was a warm sunny day, and the water was warm enough for a good play. First we had climbed the small island, and on our way back down James spotted a stingray in the clear waters right near where we were planning to swim. This didn't deter us as the water was clear enough for excellent visibility, although this is the season for fish eggs to wash up in their multitudes, and the first few meters of water was thick with the transparent jelly-like globules. After a while we tired of going over and under waves and, as the tide was out, instead focussed on civil construction techniques concerning a small stream flowing down through the sand. We dug, channeled, banked, and reinforced without any regard for time until Carolyn and the girls came down with their togs. We had another lovely swim, coaxing them in despite the stingray story and the fish eggs. It was evening by the time we all returned to the caravan. The children have named about a dozen of the horses in the paddock on the other side of the river.

Wednesday started out quietly. I had a long nap late morning, only resurfacing for lunch. In the afternoon the kids and I tackled the steep hill on the other side of the river. We had spotted some horses half way up the hill earlier in the day, but it looked like they had gone. However when we reached the small crest half-way up we saw 7-8 horses calmly munching on the grass and scratching themselves on the cabbage trees and pohutukawa. We continued to the top, and were rewarded with a magnificent view out to Cape Reinga and along the length of Spirits Bay.

Thursday saw us pile into the car and head for Cape Reinga and the lighthouse, then we turned around and drove down the dusty track to Te Paki stream, the northern vehicle entrance to 90 mile beach. We had a great time blasting down through stream, spraying water in all directions, but when we got to the beach the tide was in, so we turned around and splashed our way back up. Even Carolyn had a go at driving. The sand dunes there are monsters, I never knew NZ had dunes like it. I felt as if I was in Saudi Arabia. We couldn't afford the $15 each to hire the boards for sliding down the sand dunes, but had a go using one of our boogie boards (The guy hiring boards calls them 'brake pads'), but they have too much grip. The sand was very hot. Too hot to stand in for very long even for my feet which haven't seen shoes for 4 weeks now. On the return journey we were a little concerned about our fuel level, so at the turnoff to go back to Spirits Bay decided to head south to find the nearest fuel stop. It's a few hundred metres down the road and around a corner! It has to be one of the most expensive petrol stations in the country though. Diesel was 189c per litre compared to about 133c in Kaitaia! I put in enough to make sure we could get to Kaitaia with the caravan. On the plus side they sold huge icecreams.

The kids and I went for a short bike ride on Friday morning, but it was too hot to do much exercise. Carolyn, James, and I went to the beach for a swim in the afternoon, and on our return to the caravan were met by Esther running towards us telling us that Abigail had just found a kitten! It was small, vocal, and looked like it hadn't eaten for quite a while. We had some chicken defrosting in the fridge, a small portion of which the kitten greedily gobbled down. The children were extremely excited to have a cute kitten to play with, but we are in a DOC campsite, and no pets are allowed. Unfortunately, the DOC workers which had been working around the campsite during the week hadn't come back today, and there is no cell-phone coverage nearby. We had to drive 10 minutes to the top of the road to get cell coverage to ring DOC, and even then only Caroyn's phone worked, and not my expensive Android phone (I don't know why it wouldn't work. I could get 2-3 bars, but it wouldn't call or do mobile internet). Fortunately some DOC workers were reasonably close (an hour away) and could come to pick up the kitten. The children were all upset to see it go. Amazing how attached they became to the cute furry animal in just a few hours. We are planning on leaving tomorrow and heading somewhere south of Kaitaia, so hopefully we can post this on the way when we get mobile coverage.


Yes. The McDonalds in Kaikohe has free wifi. So here's the post. The laptop battery is running low though....