Northland - New Zealand
8/30/05
Our journey continued going to Matakohe, where we visited the Kauri Museum. (www.kauri-museum.com).
The landscape here is very different from the 'Lord of the Rings-like' mountains from the south.
What we crossed most of the time was hilly landscape ...
... taken up by thousands of farms.
Back to the Kauri; what is it?
We spent the afternoon in the museum learning all about the forest we would visit the next day.
The Waipoua Forest contains three quarters of the remaining kauri trees in New Zealand. The largest kauri, and tallest tree in New Zealand, is Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), 51m high, with a girth of over 13m.
The Kauri tree, Agathis australis, is New Zealand's largest and most famous native tree; it ranks among the most ancient in the world, pairing with the Red Woods and Sequoias in California.
The oldest tree, Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest) in Waipoua Forest, is estimated to be 2000 years old.
There are logs being recovered from the ground which were buried by natural cataclysmic events long ago. Carbon dating has indicating that logs were buried up to 50,000 years ago and it is surprisingly still good quality solid wood.
There is also a lot about kauri gum in the museum. It is a resin which bleeds from the tree and since the forest is so old, there is a vast amount of this gum buried in the ground long before our existence. The museum has kauri gum dated 43 million years old. They use it to make expensive jewelry and all kinds of artcraft.
At the end of the day we drove to Baylys Beach, a hundred-kilometer of unbroken coastline. There we stayed until the sun was gone, we watched the sun slowly dive in the sea making the water look like it was boiling.
8/31/05
After so much learning about kauries we went to see them. This is Yakas, mesuring 12.29m of girth and 43.9m of height, it is really giant.
There are many other impressive trees in the Waipoua Forest, these are actually four trees that grew up almost as one. It is now called The Four Sisters.
After we had enough of giant trees, we headed more north to the coastline, crossed with a ferry a river in a little village, ...
... kept going through the grassy hills and finished in Wapapakauri Beach, the start of the Ninety Mile Beach.
This is an absolute uncrowded straight line of beach that streches beyond your sight. We got there a minute after the sun was gone, all we saw was the pink sky.
9/1/05
We spend the day exploring the Ninety Mile Beach.
The place we prefered was Henderson Bay where the sand has a pinkish color due to the fine silica in it.
The whole area is preserved, so there are lots of marine life left. There are hundreds of jelly fish laying on the beach.
We followed a little walking path at the edge of the dunes from where you could see the whole bay.
Our journey continued going to Matakohe, where we visited the Kauri Museum. (www.kauri-museum.com).
The landscape here is very different from the 'Lord of the Rings-like' mountains from the south.
What we crossed most of the time was hilly landscape ...
... taken up by thousands of farms.
Back to the Kauri; what is it?
We spent the afternoon in the museum learning all about the forest we would visit the next day.
The Waipoua Forest contains three quarters of the remaining kauri trees in New Zealand. The largest kauri, and tallest tree in New Zealand, is Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), 51m high, with a girth of over 13m.
The Kauri tree, Agathis australis, is New Zealand's largest and most famous native tree; it ranks among the most ancient in the world, pairing with the Red Woods and Sequoias in California.
The oldest tree, Te Matua Ngahere (Father of the Forest) in Waipoua Forest, is estimated to be 2000 years old.
There are logs being recovered from the ground which were buried by natural cataclysmic events long ago. Carbon dating has indicating that logs were buried up to 50,000 years ago and it is surprisingly still good quality solid wood.
There is also a lot about kauri gum in the museum. It is a resin which bleeds from the tree and since the forest is so old, there is a vast amount of this gum buried in the ground long before our existence. The museum has kauri gum dated 43 million years old. They use it to make expensive jewelry and all kinds of artcraft.
At the end of the day we drove to Baylys Beach, a hundred-kilometer of unbroken coastline. There we stayed until the sun was gone, we watched the sun slowly dive in the sea making the water look like it was boiling.
8/31/05
After so much learning about kauries we went to see them. This is Yakas, mesuring 12.29m of girth and 43.9m of height, it is really giant.
There are many other impressive trees in the Waipoua Forest, these are actually four trees that grew up almost as one. It is now called The Four Sisters.
After we had enough of giant trees, we headed more north to the coastline, crossed with a ferry a river in a little village, ...
... kept going through the grassy hills and finished in Wapapakauri Beach, the start of the Ninety Mile Beach.
This is an absolute uncrowded straight line of beach that streches beyond your sight. We got there a minute after the sun was gone, all we saw was the pink sky.
9/1/05
We spend the day exploring the Ninety Mile Beach.
The place we prefered was Henderson Bay where the sand has a pinkish color due to the fine silica in it.
The whole area is preserved, so there are lots of marine life left. There are hundreds of jelly fish laying on the beach.
We followed a little walking path at the edge of the dunes from where you could see the whole bay.
posted by Adriano and Angie | 9:51 AM
1 Comments:
Hi, guys !!!!
What a delicious experience read your blog ! I´m using some spare time Filipe gave me (he´s sleeping) just to send you a big kiss ! Ah, when do you pretend to come to Brazil ????? (if you still pretend it). I put some pictures of my baby in my Orkut... He´s already 1 year, can you believe ?
Hugs and kisses, May
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