To the top and back

This was the big day out so quite an early start. Picked up at Waipapa we boarded the Dune Rider bus/truck on our way for adventure and exploration. Our driver Daniel was entertaining from the beginning and I managed to accumulate at least a dozen useful facts. Here they are:
1. Ninety mile beach - NZ road rules apply.
2. 90 mile beach is only 63 miles/105 kms in length and the buses only travel 73 kms along it.
3. Planted pines in Northland dried up streams in the 1800's
4. If dolphin bodies are found the local wifi bury them but keep teeth, jaws and some bones.
5. Lighthouse on Cape Reinga was built in 1941, automated in 1987 and run from Wellington.
6. Mary Jane Bennett was the first lighthouse keeper.
7. 800 year old pohutukawa tree at Cape Reinga does not flower.
8. Big kauri log at Gumdiggers is worth $500k if dug up and milled.
9. All buried kauri logs found are lying east to west and called swamp kauri. They can be buried over 100,000 years.
10. Paerangaranga Harbour - shipped silica sand to Auckland until 1995.
11. Te Kao kumera variety only grown in this area.
12. Nga Take means flock of birds. The Godwit flies non-stop 12,000kms return from Siberia each year.
13. In 1910 the first oil in NZ was made from peat dug up at Kaimaumau by Mr Trevor Oil.
14. Dwarf avocado trees only grow to 5 or 6 feet.

That's it for the useful facts, hope you enjoyed them. The map below shows the route that we took and the triangles are the stops we had.

Map sideways sorry.