Several kilometers of driving a heart-stopping windy narrow road gets you to the Tasman Sea beach town of Piha where the main and almost only attraction is the gorgeous black sand beach. As you approach, the precarious road offers a supreme lookout from the high cliffs. 
  
Waves splash up an extremely broad and flat beach, leaving reflections in the dark wet sand of the huge Piha Lion Rock that pops out of the middle of the beach. 

  
Lots of brave beachers climbed up, we peeked at the steep crude stairs chiseled in the rock and said “no way”.

Ripiro Ocean Beach is 100 km (60 mi.) of flat sand that’s New Zealand’s longest beach (beating the north’s 90 Mile Beach, which is actually about 56 miles long) and is also a highway. We rented a quad bike at the holiday park in Baileys Beach and zipped up and down this north-island west-coast beach getting chased by dogs and doing donuts, fun!

Kaiori trees are native to New Zealand, this one Tane Mahuta “The Lord of the Forest” is thought to be 2,000 years old. It’s 51.5 meters (about 169 ft.) tall with a huge trunk. Conveniently it decided to grow close to the future road, so the stop is a quick one. 

 

 
After visiting Tane Mahuta we traveled to Trounson Kauri Park to camp overnight. It has a great walk through a living Kaiori Forest. We had to clean our shoes before entering as the feeding roots of Kaiori trees are close to the surface and sensitive to soil and fungus invasion. Much of the path is elevated so foot traffic doesn’t impact the roots.

You can walk along with us through the Trounson Kaiori Forest in this video (47 Sec). 

 

Our first stay in the RV is at the Waitangi Holiday Park on the banks of the Waitangi River. 

Paihia, the town we’re in is hosting a celebration for New Zealand’s Waitangi Day national holiday over the weekend. A treaty was signed here in 1840 between the British and the indigenous Maori granting the British governance of NZ and the Maiori the rights of British subjects. The English and Māori versions of the Treaty differed significantly, so there is no consensus as to exactly what was agreed to. 
The bay at Paihia is gorgeous, this panorama from the shore shows a bit of the 144 islands in the bay. 

 

We picked up our home (for the next 4 weeks) on wheels from Britz near the Auckland airport Wednesday morning. It’s 18 feet of Toyota campervan goodness with beds, burners, fridge and a sink.   

We logged around 250 km today (including a few laps circling a roundabout in the wrong direction) finally safely arriving at the Waitangi Holiday Park for a beer, sunset and bed. 

On our first day in Auckland we visited the Sky Tower, at 328 meters or 1,076 ft. tall it’s the tallest building in town. 

 We returned at sunset. 

Our 2nd day here found us on a ferry ride to this volcanic island. 

We were surprised that in just 600 to 1,000 years after it erupted it is now filled with all this vegetation. Including a 250-year-old tree. We could see downtown Auckland and Sky Tower from Rangitoto Island. We needed to 20X zoom to see it across the water, but it’s there.