90 Mile Beach

It is Saturday morning, at 830, and Steve and I have now been on a bus heading South to Rotorua for the past hour.  It was a noisy Friday night in the hostel (we should have known when we saw three cops standing on the corner that it was going to be a rowdy night!!) and the 710 bus pick-up came much earlier than we would have liked!!

The last few days we rented a car and headed out of Auckland.  We headed up to the North of the Island, which is a subtropical area since we are in the Southern Hemisphere.  We had wonderful weather and really enjoyed the scenery.  We first drove around the the area known as "the Bay of Islands".  Lots of little islands off the coast scattered all the way up to the North tip.  We had a nice afternoon on the beach in Paihia, and again, these beaches are just as beautiful (if not more beautiful) than any other beaches we have ever seen before.

Yesterday we took an organized tour up to the most Northern tip--Cape Reinga.  The day started out driving up and stopping at numerous little shops and quaint beaches along the way.  There is an area that is white silica sand beach--very beautiful!  You end up at the Cape and this is really neat-the area where the Pacific Ocean meets the Tasman Sea.  We had a very nice day, meaning the waters were quite quiet, but apparently sometimes these two seas can be quite violent when the two streams collide.  Then the finale of the trip is driving down a sand highway known as 90 Mile Beach.  We were told it is about 63 Miles long, but it is an actual legislated highway in New Zealand.  Really really neat!!  You have to be quite careful with tides and things, cause there have been lots of tourists who have had their cars stuck because they didn't realize the sand was too soft or the tide was coming in.  We also stopped off at some sand dunes and went sand tobogganing.  Was a fun adventure until I bailed off my board (video clip to follow) and we both had sand covering us for the remainder of the day!

So, we are now sitting on the bus and trying to upload some pictures for you.  We also got a few cool videos from the 90 Mile Beach trip that I will send you--words just can't describe the things we were driving through!  Hope everything is well in Canada and we will be in touch soon with pictures and video of our adventures!!