I am traveling through the Northland region of New Zealand.  And where is Northland you may ask? It’s considered anywhere north of Auckland. A region which is mainly rural and less traveled, as most visitors tend to head south.  This is the warmest part of New Zealand with a sub-tropical climate.

The roads are excellent but watch your speed as I got an expensive souvenir from the Ministry of Transport (speeding ticket). Northland with its warm climate  is the “fruit bowl” of the country there are fruit vendors on the side of the road, many still with honesty boxes for their wares.

As you can clearly see from the video I got a couple of bad days with the weather.  The winds got up and the rain came down, but I had a blast. The bad weather can blow over in an hour or two.  That wind when I was boogie boarding on the sand dunes was just brutal. I was finding sand in socks, pockets and in my backpack for weeks afterwards.

New Zealander’s enjoy their food, the café run by a couple of woman on a pier just out of Hokianga was a real find. The coffee was as good as I would get in a café in Paris. These ladies, like many New Zealanders had lived and worked in Europe and brought back their skills with them. They had opened up this small café in the middle of nowhere. The fish and chips in the video were to die for, the fish was so fresh, almost a shame to deep fry it in batter.  The fishing boats responsible for our meal were bobbing gently on the harbour right behind the terraced eating area.

One of the most incredible things for me on this trip was the mystical nature of much of this area.  The northern most tip of the country is Cape Reinga and it is one of the most scared areas in the land for the Maori people.  There are a number of important legends regarding the cape. The amazing tour though the Waipoua forest with Maori guides, singing their traditional songs through the kauri trees was profoundly moving. To be honest the video did not capture this as well as I would have liked, it guess it is one of those things that you have to do yourself.

There are a lot of things that we did not cover in the region there is just so much to do. Check out Northland tourisms excellent site for more information