In the morning we got showered, cooked breakfast then set out on another 3 hour drive to get to the very north of New Zealand. We were heading here to see the famous '90 mile beach' and also do some sand-boarding in the huge sand dunes they have around the area. We needed to fill up with diesel after a while, but it only cost us around £12 each for a full tank - it is much cheaper than England for diesel!

After driving along the coast all the way up, admiring more great scenery we came across a place we had seen in a brochure and thought we would stop and take a look. The brochure called it an underground forest which sounded interesting, but it wasn't very exciting at all! It was a small exhibition which walks around a forest, showing how years ago local people used to collect the gum ( sort of resin, sap and nectar ) from Kauri trees, and dig down into old trees to collect it, then it would be sold on to use in wood varnishes etc. The 'underground forest' part, was because over hundreds of years trees had fallen down, then forest had grown on top, effectively making the ground higher. The most interesting part was that they had unearthed a large tree trunk which was 9 metres in girth!... and is said to be the oldest fossilised bit of wood in the world. It was raining quite a bit so we went back and made some lunch in the camper and carried on heading North.

After driving up through the mountains we finally arrived at Cape Reina which is the most northern part of NZ. It was high up in the clouds and when the clouds blew over us it was quite hard to see more than 10 metres ahead of you. We were looking for a lighthouse which is the most northern point and looks out to the sea ( obviously ). We couldn't see it at first because of the clouds so we wandered down the track, then came off the track and walked along the grassy mountain right up to the edge of the cliff face. After looking at the views for a while, the clouds had cleared and we could see the lighthouse. It wasn't that far away at all now that the clouds had blown over. We climbed back up the mountain, our own way instead of going along the track, which was more tiring that we thought it would be! The sea was so blue, and from here you can see where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean. It creates a line in the water so you can actually see where the two oceans start and finish. We walked back along the track to the camper, then went to the nearest campsite to sleep for the night. We cooked dinner again, then watched a film and some TV in the room they had there for anyone to use.