Cyndi and Rich aboard Legacy
December 2012
There is a walk through the forest to the base of Whangarei Falls. From here, you can take a trail to one of three places: the Whangarei Town Basin, the AH Reed Kauri Park, or the Whangarei Falls parking lot. Because we were short on time, we took the trail to the parking lot. But even with the shorter walk we saw some beautiful scenery. You can click to enlarge any photo below while using “next photo” to scroll through them. –Cyndi
December 2012
Not to be outdone by Kerikeri’s Rainbow Falls (the subject of an upcoming post), Whangarei has its own falls, and they are pretty spectacular. –Cyndi
December 2012
One of the best ways to see Whangarei is to head up to the Mount Parihaka Lookout for a panoramic view of the city and the river going out to the ocean. You can hike, or you can cheat and drive up. We opted to cheat and drive up, figuring we could always do the hike later.
Unfortunately the area around Whangarei was close enough to us in Opua to fall into the “we can always do that later” category. “Later” has a nasty habit of becoming “never.” Thus, we ended up seeing almost all of Northland (everything north of Auckland) except some areas near Whangarei.
Whangarei Heads, Chapman’s Clock Museum, Native Bird Recovery Center, Mair Park, Bream Head, Longview Estate Winery, and McGregors Bay are all still waiting for “later.” –Cyndi
December 2012 – March 2013
The biggest decision for cruisers visiting New Zealand is where to make their home base. This is the place where you’ll spend the vast majority of your time and do your day-to-day living: shopping, laundry, walks/runs/hikes, restaurants, movies, driving, local sightseeing, small boat projects, doctor/dentist visits, and socializing. It’s also the area where you’ll likely haul your boat out (pretty much every cruising boat needs to haul out at some point) and do your bigger boat projects. And it’s the base from which you’ll travel around New Zealand and will color your experience of New Zealand, so it’s an important decision.
There are four likely home bases for cruising yachts in the North Island: Opua/Bay of Islands, Whangarei (including Marsden Cove), Auckland, and Tauranga.
The vast majority of cruisers clear through customs in Opua, and then end up making their home base at either Opua or Whangarei, preferring to visit Auckland only by car. Most cruisers have barely heard of Tauranga and don’t consider it as an option (although Rich and I are trying to help change that).
We made Opua our home base, but since Whangarei was only 45 minutes away by car, we made a few trips there. We visited friends, saw movies, bought a car, sold stuff to the used-boat-parts store, got a wisdom tooth extracted (Rich), and enjoyed some great sightseeing. Sometimes we spent the night, and sometimes we just drove back to Opua that same day. In many ways Whangarei was like a second home.
Whangarei is basically a city on a river. For a boat to get there, it must travel several hours up the river at high tide. Once there, you will need a slip in either the Whangarei Marina or the Riverside Drive Marina. The Whangarei Marina (aka Town Basin) is the best option, a stone’s throw from the waterfront restaurants and a large supermarket, and within walking distance of downtown. Riverside Drive is a small marina on the outskirts of town. (There is also Marsden Cove Marina down where the river meets the ocean, but it’s far enough away to feel like a different area entirely.)
We had several friends who opted to stay at the Whangarei Marina, and they enjoyed their time there. There’s a beautiful pedestrian bridge that connects both sides of the river and offers quick access to the restaurants, walking and hiking trails and is the site of the weekly Farmer’s Market. Whangarei also has a good location in that it’s only a 45-minute drive north to the Bay of Islands and a two-hour drive south to Auckland. Whangarei’s main disadvantage is its distance from good cruising areas, but if you want to settle in for awhile, it’s a nice place. Below, a few photos from the pretty Whangarei area.
(You can click on a photo to enlarge, then scroll through photos by clicking “next image” just above and to the left of photos .) –Cyndi
December, 2012
Late this morning, we stopped at the cafe1 for a long back2 and flat white3 to take on our trip to Paihia4 to enjoy the pohutukawa5 blooms of silly season6 before going for a scorcher peri peri7 in Kerikeri8 and some hokey pokey ice cream9. -Cyndi
The only way I can begin to explain what Cyndi’s talking about is through footnotes.
1. The cafe in question is the wonderful little restaurant at our marina.
2. You don’t order regular, brewed coffee here in NZ10. A long black is a shot or two of espresso with hot water added to fill the cup. It’s incredible – the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. This is a real treat after the long coffee-quality drought we’ve been through in the Tropical Pacific.
3. A flat white is a long black with milk instead of water. It’s like a cafe au lait, kind of.
4. Paihia is the small town closest to us. We’re in Opua but it’s really just a few businesses, the cafe (see 1 above) and the marina. Paihia is about 15 minutes away by Audi.
5. Pohutukawa trees are NZ’s Christmas trees. They look a lot like bottle-brush trees, blooming with bright red blooms around Christmas time. There are very famous New Zealand scenes with the blooming pohutukawa trees hanging out over the water.
6. Silly season is what the Kiwi’s11 call Christmas vacation. It seems that no Kiwi wants to be home for Christmas – everyone travels, businesses close for weeks at a time and the holiday towns (like Paihia) get very busy.
7. McDonald’s here in NZ serves a sandwich called a scorcher peri peri. Apparently, it’s a spicy Portuguese chicken sandwich which we’ve yet to try.
8. Kerikeri is the larger town about 30 minutes from our boat in Opua. It’s a really nice town, about half the size of Santa Monica maybe. There are a bunch of nice restaurants, two huge supermarkets and one movie theater.
9. Hokey Pokey seems to be the national ice cream flavor of NZ. It’s vanilla ice cream with pieces of sponge toffee (little crunchy bits). It’s good!
10. NZ is short for New Zealand – I’ll bet you figured that out! What you may not know is that the NZ alphabet has one letter that’s different from the US alphabet. Here, when you say the letter Z, you say zed.
11. For some reason, New Zealanders call themselves Kiwis after their silly yet distinctive and rare bird. Maybe us Americans should call ourselves the Eagles or the Balds?
footnotes by Rich