Omana Beach to Waharau Park

Wednesday

Our first morning in the van and we woke up in a beautiful place! Several people at the hostel told us how exhilerating it is to arrive at the campsite at night and have a spectacular view revealed in the morning. We were right on a beach, a beach made of seashells instead of sand, with a glorious view over the ocean to some islands and back towards Auckland. It was however very windy so we decided to drive down the road to a more sheltered spot to make breakfast. We drove to Duder Point Regional Park (which we had tried to camp at the night before - but it had been gated.) This was a much more sheltered spot, so we cooked breakfast (oatmeal, Wheet Bix, and tea) and sat outside watching all the local birds. The parking lot was in a very pastoral setting, surrounded by pasture and there were dozens of these big native birds called Pukeko. I haven't gotten a good picture yet. They are very pretty birds, but slightly comical with their big legs and feet.

We went for a nice hike around the point that leads through cattle and sheep pasture and gives great views of the ocean and inland. The point (and a lot of the coastline) reminds us strongly of Pt Reyes in California. Duder Pt, and a lot of NZ, used to be all dense native forest, but has since been logged and turned to farmland. It's depressing to think about how much it has been changed, but it is still quite beautiful. Besides the logging, all the non-native introduced species are a big problem here. Opossums, rats, cats, and stoats are endangering the native birds and plants, and we saw numerous traps on our hike.

The tide was very low with the full moon and the beaches are very shallow so we saw lots of different shorebirds (that I can't identify.) And on the way down the hill we saw our first wild parrots! We could hear the squawking in the trees and suddenly a pair flew out and over our heads. We didn't see them for long, but they were medium-sized parrots with red heads, green bodies and blueish tails. I'm fairly certain they were Eastern Rosellas - a non-native introduced from Australia and fairly common in this area of NZ. (I think I caught a glimpse of one during breakfast too - but I wasn't certain.) Anyways, they were beautiful and I can't wait to see the native NZ parrots :)

And to cap a perfect afternoon, a complete rainbow appeared in the sky over the Firth of Thames (the body of water east of Duder Point.)

After the hike, we had lunch - peanut butter and jelly sandwiches... again, and then drove south along the coast for a ways. We stopped at a local fruit stand and bought some madarins and local raw honey (very good) and continued on to our next campground at Waharau Regional Park.

We were the only people at the campground which was great, and we cooked a big meal with the meat and veggies we bought the day before - don't worry, they were kept cold in our "chilly bin" - the kiwi term for a cooler :)

I should tell you a little about our van. It is a Toyota Hi Ace van that has been nicely kitted-out for travel. The back converts into a queen-sized bed or two benches and a table, with plenty of storage underneath. And the kitchen is at the very back, with a dual burner camping stove, a small sink with a 20L water tank, and some storage. It's all very convenient and we are very happy that we didn't get a smaller van instead. A lot of the vans are just a bed in back, and so you have to set up your kitchen outside (ie. in the rain) and you have nowhere to sit inside. Ours is very cozy and stays pretty warm at night too.