Tutukaka Coast and the Old Russell Road

Set off from the lodge after a breakfast of fruit skewers with muesli and yoghurt, followed by a two egg rolled omelette for one, and spinach, poached egg and bacon in a muffin for the other. 

Delicious sourdough bread seems to be the defaul in both Canada and NZ accompanied by homemade preserves. 

The road took us along the Tutukaka coast - beaches, beaches, beaches.

The visitor information says that this is one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. We are not going to argue with this.

It starts with the Ngunguru estuary and river reserve before arriving at the coast. 

Around the Te Maika headland visiting Church Bay, Kowharewa Bay, Pacific Bay and Whangaumu Bay, ending up overlooking Tutukaka marina. 

Not happy that he's in the first two pictures, he photo bombs this one of Tutukaka marina. 

Very bendy and narrow road through steep sided valleys of volcanic origin. In places the road had actually fallen away and was coned off (the authorities on Vancouver Island should visit here before professing their roads to be narrow and twisting).

Then, guess what ...

Beaches with surfers.  Look away now if your bored with beaches. 

A huge swell running and lots of sets of waves coming in.

Woolleys Bay, Sandy Bay, Matapouri Bay, Whale Bay, Surf Bay. 

Turning inland for a section of the route we thought it may be a bit boring, but the farmland proved to be very interesting, with what seemed to be raptors arguing over their quarry it turned out to be  Spur Winged Plover displaying, before landing and giving us this view. They were making one hell of a noise - like a high pitched machine gun stutter. The air was also filled with the sound of Skylarks. 

Kingfishers abounded on the wires.

Nearly reached the main highway again, but stopped at Waro Reserve for a look at the 40 million year old limestone formations.

Some interesting farmland features!

and an incredible cacophony from a horde (?) of sparrows - or at least they sounded like sparrows.  Must have been multiple hundreds of them anyway. A small slice of some in motion, if you can spot them in the field of some sort of vegetables! 

Also spotted this Pied Stilt...

Not back on the highway for long before we turn off along the old Russell Road, or at least once we had retraced our steps following us missing the 'easy to miss' turn off it mentions in the guidebooks. 

Another beautiful drive along bendy roads brought us to Helena Bay Area and lunch at Art Gallery and Cafe - stunning location and scrumptious food - even had a coffee.

Lunchtime location.

A steak sandwich.

And Spinach Brattling. 

Arriving at the next B&B down a very steep hill (hope we don't have to walk back up this to get to the village).  As we are their first guests of the season and the only ones staying here, we were offered a choice of rooms. We opted for the rather spacious bedroom, lounge type area, separate bathroom and hallway as well as private verandah! Not only that but the views were terrific.  

Found out there was a "walking week" and tonight's option was an evening Kiwi walk.  Only six of us on the walk and we started off at the site of the famous flagstaff on top of the hill. Good sunset and nearly 360 degree panoramic views.  

Set off on our walk through the forest with our red flashlights pointing at our feet.  It was an incredibly quiet night.  We heard Weko and Ru Ru or Morepork (owls) but unfortunately no Kiwi seen or heard.  We did however see some glow worm.  On the way back to the village we scrumped some grapefruit from somebody's garden - to be fair it was someone who was on the walk with us! Had them later that same night, deliciously sweet. 

New Zealand

The plane lands about 45 minutes early after a fairly comfortable flight. A bit over 13 hours in total. We did have a few moments of panic when we saw a guy that would make Jonah Lomuh look small waiting to board, imagining him taking up the third seat in our row!

In actuality we had a very pleasant Kiwi lady who gave us some useful information.  

Picked up the hire car in the early morning coldness. This time another Ford Focus, which we decided was a much better vehicle than the Fiat500. 

The Fiat was too small and underpowered for the automatic gearbox as it was never quite sure which gear it wanted to be in. 

Anyway got away from the airport and after 4 weeks driving on the right side of the road it took some getting used driving on the right side of the road, which of course is the left. 

We had forgotten to download the free GPS app for New Zealand before leaving Canada, so without Flossies New Zealand cousin to guide us we had to make our own way to Whangarei (pronounced Van-ger-ray - with a soft sort of silent g - a bit like a Welsh mutation).  The map Avis had given us was too difficult to understand but luckily a local person gave us some instructions how to head north out of Auckland, which worked. There was one toll road, which we managed to avoid by taking the scenic route. This was lucky as we stopped in Orewa for a walk around part of the estuary 

where we saw Oystercatcher, and either Pied or Little Shag, probably the latter given the recorded range (a bit of a blurred piccie).

Plus a number if other familiar birds and some unfamiliar but common ones here, Thrush, Goldfinch, Sparrows, then Tui and Myna bird.

This was followed by a cup of tea, breakfast croissant and a cake. As you can see Eric enjoyed his.

  

Further along the road in Orewa we hit the beach. Another chance to exercise those legs after sitting down for so long. Especially as the sun had risen to warm us by now. 

 On to the next beach at Waiwera. 

Then just before we rejoined the main highway again we came across the river and mangrove swamp.

started to go inland, and a stopped to look at a place called Puihoi, which is an historic Bohemian village famous for its cheese factory.

We saw this Pukeko or Swamp Hen around this area.

Stopped for a leg stretch near Wenderholm Regional Park for a gawk at the view.

At Pohuehue we stopped for a walk in some old growth Kauri forest that led to (yet another) waterfall and saw some free range chickens wandering at the side of the car park, no farm or any buildings or apparent owners anywhere around.

The start of the short but many stepped walk.

Eric looking for the waterfall, it could be heard but not seen.

Also back at the car park we saw Monarch Butterfly - the other side of the world to the last one!

Thought Warkworth might be worth a stop as it's namesake in Northumberland is so beautiful, but it didn't quite match our expectations even if it did have a suburb called Alnwick, and a river.

Along the coast was Mangawhai Heads and Waipu, where there were some protected sand dunes as well as a surfing beach, both of which had rare birds on.  The dunes were largely inaccessible so didn't see the Caspian Terns but we stumbled upon the Banded Dotterel at the beach. it's nesting site was cordoned off and labelled.

Waipu

Despite this we reached the B&B in Whangarei (well Glenbervie really) fairly early in the afternoon and were upgraded to a larger room, with it's own sitting room and access to the verandah. Freshened up and headed back for some more sightseeing:

Whangarei Falls ...

    Phew !! Glad they saved me from     going over there. 

... and the Town Basin, which was in fact a Marina

with some lovely buildings around it, a clock museum with flower beds and some shops.  

Starting to flag a bit by now so return to B&B for dinner and bed. 

The B&B is an old house reminiscent of Carnegie built in the 1800s complete with tin roof. It had not been built here but moved from a spot about 6 miles away.  We saw a house being moved on a trailer in the Town Basin area, but the B&B house was actually sliced in two to move it, as it was too big to do in one go.

Directions from here should now be OK as we did now manage to download the NZ version of NavFree, so we do have a GPS lady to guide us. Purely coincidentally she is also called Flossie. 

Lots of birds seen today. We are going to put them in a separate entry just to record all the NZ birds as we go.