Cape Reinga

We were SO lucky on our Bay of Islands trip as after bagging a free parasail, Kristina received further good news that we could get onto the Cape Reinga trip for FREE!!! We just had to help them out by taking part in a little photo shoot for their new brochures, apparently we were doing them a favour hah! So we started our trip with AwesomeNZ up to Cape Reinga the most northern point of the country. The name Reinga is translated from Maori to 'underworld' and the Maori people believe this is where the spirits of the dead come before they pass on into the afterlife. It is a spiritual place where many Kiwis come to say goodbye to their loved ones once they've passed away. On the way, our first stop was a little forest walk with a huge tree in the middle of it called a pohutukawa tree, that if you hugged you were supposed to wake up refreshed and bounce out of bed. I was particularly excited for Day to give this a hug! We hung back from the group to take some extra shots with the photographer (Chris) and the sales and marketing director from AwesomeNZ (Mike) then drove in their jeep up to Cape Reinga to meet the rest of the group. We drove through rain clouds through the mountains so were a bit worried about the weather but when we arrived the skies had cleared and it was the most beautiful day! We walked down the hill to the lighthouse and sign post and took some snaps and got involved in a group shot where we met Vicky, Amy and Tim. Apparently one of the shots will be used for the front cover! We then headed to the sand dunes where we could sand board down huge 40 metre sand dunes. I was terrified!! But after a practice run on the smaller ones for the photo shoot we climbed up to the top and after our rest to catch our breath sand boarded all the way down - amazing!

We then got back on the bus and headed to a place called 90 mile beach. Although it's called that, it is actually 56 miles long and is gorgeous and flat. You could walk along the beach and pick up hundreds of mussels just from the sand on the shore! We drove along the whole beach along the shore the whole 56 miles before heading back to the hostel! Definitely the best day of our trip so far!