The Far North

We visited the northern most tip of New Zealand yesterday, Cape Reinga and it was incredible. Beautiful countryside, great beaches and all around amazing scenery. Left Pahia on the Dune Rider at 7am and headed north with our leader for the day, Kozzie (he's a Kiwi that sounds like an Aussie hence the nickname). We were treated to a drive along 90 Mile Beach, a 64 mile stretch of beach on the western coast. Why would someone name a 64 mile beach "90 Mile Beach"? Because the boob that named it measured wrong and thought it was 90 miles long. Brilliant! ""64 Mile Beach"doesn't really have the same ring to it does it?

The drive on the beach took us to the main event for the day, sand boarding. I'm imagining a few gasps of terror among the Hunter clan as you picture us being subjected to some form of torture similar to water boarding, only much drier. Well you guys can relax as sand boarding (also known as dune surfing) is what people do for fun up on 90 Mile Beach, and boy is it fun! There are some humungous sand dunes at the end of the beach and people basically body surf (some use sleds but it looked pretty lame) down the slopes and across a little stream at the bottom. Great stuff although the walk back to the top was actually torture.

Riding some gnarly dunes on 90 Mile Beach