Weekend getaway to the Far North of New Zealand

This year the Queen’s Birthday weekend didn’t sneak up on me for once and I was able to plan a little 4-day getaway. I initially wanted to go to Australia for a few days since my girlfriend hadn’t been there before but in the end we decided it would be more fun to rent an RV and explore the Far North. Cape Reinga to be specific, which is located at the northern end of the North Island of New Zealand.
Neither of us had been to that part of the country yet, so it seemed like a good choice.

We picked up our surprisingly spacious RV on Friday morning and drove up to the beautiful Bay of Islands (while stopping for a walk in Whangarei) where we spent the night. By the time we got there it started raining heavily as the weather forecast had predicted.

The next morning we visited the Waitangi Treaty Grounds which was simply amazing. Despite the bad weather our tour guide showed us around and taught us a lot about this historic place. The museum was also a great experience and I would definitely recommend going for a visit as it’s well worth it. We stayed for about 3 hours, had a short lunch break and headed further up north.

As we made our way to Awanui, the rain became so bad that we thought about abandoning our trip right then and there to return to Auckland. In fact, fields and roads were flooded which made driving quite dangerous. We kept driving though and fortunately it got better once we arrived in Awanui.

On Sunday we had one goal in mind: reach Cape Reinga. We woke up to beautiful sunshine and were really happy we didn’t cancel our trip. We were advised to fill up on gas before taking the road all the way up north which we did (had to get coffee as well!) and off we went!

We arrived at Cape Reinga around 11am and made our our way to the lighthouse. It was a short, enjoyable walk with a breathtaking view.
As I mentioned earlier this is the northern end of New Zealand where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea collide which I think is really cool to see.

Once we took a bunch of pictures and admired the view, we drove back down. Before returning to Awanui for the night I insisted on stopping at Ninety Mile Beach as I had to see this massive beach for myself.

By the time we got back to Awanui we were too tired to go anywhere so we spent the night at our previous camping spot.
The following day we returned home and skipped Waipoua as it would’ve been too much of a detour. We finally arrived in Auckland early afternoon without having to deal with too much traffic on the way. What a fun little trip that was!