North as North can be (almost) at Cape Reinga

After departing the Bay of Islands, we drove up towards the tip of NZ. A bit of back story about Cape Reinga is in a tidbits post on the site. To supplement the bits of knowledge there, check out the wikipedia article about the Cape. It’s an incredibly meaningful place for local Maori people, and you start to feel why once you arrive and look around.

We arrived in the late afternoon, so instead of going directly to the Cape and being rushed for time, we drove to the DOC (Dept of Conservation) campground at nearby Tapotupotu Bay where we’d planned to camp that night. DOC campgrounds are easy to find across the country; they’re relatively inexpensive and typically have water, bathrooms, and parking. We particularly liked this one because the ‘campsites’ were just the fields that surrounded the dirt road that we drove in on, and we found a nice wind-blocking tree right behind the beach to pitch the tent under. Others had driven their campervans off the road, up to the top of a grassy hill – definitely would not be ok in the US. After checking out the beach and feeder river throughout sunset, we cooked up some dinner and went to sleep.

The next morning after packing up, we finished the last few “K’s” (kilometers) of the drive up to the actual Cape. A winding pathway leads from the parking lot on top of a bluff down to a lighthouse about 100ft above the ocean(s). We hadn’t really expected the ‘meeting of the Seas’ (the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean) to be very remarkable, but seeing the currents crash into each other around the Cape made for some really cool wave action and shallow sandbars that turned the water all kinds of blue. Definitely worth the drive up and long walk down to the end of the path.