Tuesday Feb 21st Temp 26 Mangawgai

 It was another beautiful day as we said goodbye to the Bay of Islands and headed across to the western side of the island. Our first stop was a delightful little town located on an estuary that flowed into the Tasman, called Hokianga. We stopped at a café for coffee before exploring more of this magnificent area. We went on a walk to the site of the old signal station at Arai te Nature reserve close to the town of Omapure. The weather was perfect and the seas were fairly calm. From here we drove inland to the Waipoua Forest, home of the massive Kauri trees. We took a short walk into the forest to view the largest of all the trees, Tane Mahuta. This Kauri tree was over 2,000 years old! A guide/ranger was sitting on a seat near this magnificent tree and was able to give us some fascinating information about the tree and also the disease that is threatening the trees. (To view the trees we had to have our shoes thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.) She also said that we were extremely lucky as the track to the tree had only opened up that day after being closed for a week due to damage from the cyclone. There were other tracks into more kauri trees but they were all closed due to cyclone damage. From here we drove to a small town called Dargaville and stopped for lunch. It appeared that this town had suffered from the cyclone, with the nearby river/estuary, flooding the main street. Many of the shops still had their sandbags outside the entrances. Continuing on we called into the Matakohe Kauri Museum. We thought an hour would be plenty of time to see this museum but we should have allocated ½ a day. It was a fabulous museum, with extensive displays of the regions, logging, farming and social history. Of course the great Kauri trees were the most important feature here. Our final destination was Mangawhai, a pretty little town on the east coast. We have beautiful accommodation over-looking the ocean. We went to a relaxed Mexican restaurant for dinner before finishing the evening with a delightful walk along the beach located on the estuary.