One Month In New Zealand!!!!

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Whangarei Falls

Wednesday Oct 19th we drove south to Whangarei, which is about one hour. We hiked to Whangarei falls from A.H. Reed Park. The walk was along the river thru a couple cow pastures, over a suspension bridge, and through the forest. It was a gorgeous spot with a nice wooden bridge right over the river in front of the falls. We had lunch there and then hiked back. After the park, we went into the town and found a bowling alley. We bowled a few games and then did some shopping in a nearby shopping area. We went to a huge sporting goods store, a huge camping/outdoor store, and a huge housewares store. It was nice to have a "normal" shopping experience. Lots of aisles, loads of selection, sales, and products we recognized! Where we live there are only small stores; you don't realize the strange comforts of home that you miss. Now, if we could just find a Publix... (Just Kidding). It was a great day. Thursday we are off to the golf course!

Laying Low

The last several days we have kinda been laying low. We have golfed a couple times on two different courses. One day at the KeriKeri Golf Club and another at the Waitangi Golf Club. On Saturday our friend Jason came over and we hung out and played dice and card games all day out on the deck in the sun. It was a nice relaxing day. On Sunday we tried to go to the orchid and bromeliad show in KeriKeri, however we found out once driving over there it was only Friday and Saturday. But then we thought... well it's Sunday, while we are in KeriKeri we should go to the farmers market (which we know is held on Sundays), however it was 1:00 and the farmers market apparently is held from 8:00-12:00. A Day Late and a Dollar Short! (As Dave would say). We still managed to have a good time though, we stopped in Paihia and walked around for a bit, then headed home.

Waipoua Forest

On Thursday Oct 13th, we headed about an hour and a half west to the Waipou Forest to see some living Kauri trees. A couple blog posts ago we explained about ancient kauri wood, so we really wanted to see living kauri. On our way to the forest we stopped at an information center, got a local map, and set out to find some trees. We did stop at a lookout point by the Tasman Sea on our way to the trails to get some photos of the ocean. Once we got to the Kauri walks, we went on several different trails and saw lots of huge trees. The tree with the biggest girth we saw, known as Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest), was 53 feet 10 inches around. The tallest known as Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), was 169 feet tall and 2000 years old. We also saw a group of four huge Kauri trees known as the Four Sisters. They grew really close together at the base, but have completely separate trunks. It was a bit chilly and wet, but we really enjoyed the forest.

Fishing

Dave set out early Sunday morning on a fishing trip with his friend Jason. While the weather was forecasted to be a bit lousy, it turned out to be a great calm day on the water. They were out from 6:00am to about 2:00pm. The catch of the day included 4 pacific yellowtail a.k.a. New Zealand Kingfish (picture below), 20 rose fish, about 40 golden snapper, a couple sharks, and a few others. Most were thrown back but a few were kept for dinner!

The picture above is the fish on Sunday, Below is the fish the following few days...

Ancient Kauri

Kauri trees are among the oldest and biggest trees growing in the world. We have gone into several woodworking shops while here in New Zealand and seen some pretty amazing wood products made from ancient kauri. Ancient Kauri is 45,000-50,000 years old. It fell all those years ago into the swamp land and has been preserved in the wetlands for thousands of years. Excavation of the logs is a difficult and time consuming process. Once the logs are excavated, they are milled into awesome products.

A huge staircase was made into a trunk that was found and is now a centerpiece for the Kauri Kingdom store in the far north.The 1087 year old tree, weighed 140 tons when extracted from the ground, and is the largest piece ever found. A 50 ton section was cut from the tree to make the staircase. It took 300 hours to chainsaw the staircase out of the 50 ton piece that was cut from the log and 200 more hours to be finished. Kauri trees do still grow in New Zealand but are protected by very strict laws.

There are some really pretty bowls, cutting boards, picture frames, tables, and many other awesome products made out of this ancient wood. We saw a huge couch that was 50,000 dollars. It was awesome, but that's a little pricey! But who knows how much more of this wood is left to be milled.

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