From Waipapa we drove 2 hours north to our most northerly destination in New Zealand. We are staying on a Protea flower farm in the countryside, not really close to anything at all. This was the most northerly place we could find accommodation in order to visit Cape Reinga and 90 Mile Beach, however the weather did not co-operate at all ☹️ We arrived to advisories in place for a sub-tropical depression bringing heavy rains for 48 hours, and we were only here for 2 days!!
Shortly after our arrival, and before the rain, we drove a short distance away to Rerewa Beach for a brief walk. It is a powdery white sand beach that must be incredible on a sunny day. Our walk was a reminder of the cruelty of nature as we spotted a very large headless turtle and a tiny penguin dead on the beach. We informed our hosts when we returned home and they called the conservation department to come and remove the turtle, possession of a turtle shell is illegal in New Zealand and this one was a beauty that I’m sure someone would have loved to claim.
Courtesy of our hosts we tried a new fruit while here, a Feijoa, also called a pineapple guava. Originally from South America the fruit is widely grown throughout New Zealand. The fruit is usually eaten by cutting it in half, then scooping out the pulp with a spoon. They have a juicy sweet seed pulp and slightly gritty flesh nearer the skin. We quite liked them!
Our cottage was called ‘Protea Cottage’ because our hosts have a good sized King Protea farm here. We enjoyed a brief wander around the bushes but because they take the buds off every Tuesday and Sunday we would not see any in bloom. They need to be cut, trimmed and packed up for delivery to local florists and around the world. We had a lovely big vase of King Proteas on the deck outside our cottage, they are an impressive size. I managed to get a couple of photos of the large buds still on the plants the morning we left. I looked up the cost of these flowers and at a Vancouver florist, one King Protea stem sells for CDN $60….WOW!!!
The tropical depression and ‘do not travel’ warnings kept us indoors for the entire 2 days we were here unfortunately. There was a lot of flooding everywhere and the roads heading south of Houhora were closed. We got a little anxious that we would be stuck here but the morning we were scheduled to leave, the sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. The flood closures were re-opened by mid morning and we only had one detour and a couple of low spots to drive through where water remained on the road. Overall we were pretty darn happy to get out of there and on to our next stay. Of course, we are both disappointed that we did not see the sights we wanted to at the top of New Zealand, but weather is out of our control.
We are off to our final stop in New Zealand in Ngunguru, a coastal town 3 hour north of Auckland…