24 Hours in Matakana

The weekend before we left for our trip to the States, we headed up to Matakana to celebrate our friend KS's 30th birthday. Matakana is a small town just an hour north of Auckland that is blessed with beautiful beaches, wineries and an abundance of charm.  We still had a lot to do before our trip and Canadian Thanksgiving to celebrate, so we could only stay for one night. But we will definitely be back!

Our first stop was the Matakana Farmer's Market, which is a popular weekend activity for many Aucklanders - and based on these pictures, it's not hard to see why!

It's like something out of a movie!

Top row: Paella on the left and Cheese on Wheels on the right - deeelicious!  Bottom row: Some young entreprenuers. Sadly they didn't have any adult sized robot boxes, but Rob got a nice shoe shine from a Newsie.

 After the market, we headed to some wineries in the area for a bit of wine tasting and some platters.

After wine tasting it was birthday dinner and drinks at the Matakana, a popular restaurant in the middle of town.  Then we headed back to our bach, which was an old church, for a little Cards Against Humanity.

Happy birthday!!

Heading North

Between our Christmas 2013-14 road trip and our weekend getaways, we've covered a good chunk of New Zealand's North Island, but the one major area we'd skipped is Northland, which is the region north of Auckland.  When it came time to pick a spot for celebrating our 2nd wedding anniversary, it was the first spot that came to mind.

Top left:September 21, 2012; Top right: September 21, 2013; Bottom: September 21, 2014

We left Friday after work and drove 3.5 hours to Ahipara, a tiny town at the southern tip of Ninety Mile Beach (a beach that is actually only 55 miles, but "90 Kilometre Beach" doesn't really have the same ring to it). 

Ninety Mile Beach - includes sightings of a motorbike driver and a dying albatross

We were up early Saturday for a tour up to Cape Reinga, which is at the northernmost tip of New Zealand! Our tour started with a drive up Ninety Mile Beach (actually driving on the sand for nearly an hour), and then stopped for some dune boarding.  I was expecting some tiny sand dunes like you see along the shore, but these were huge! They reminded me of the pyramids at Giza.

Dune boarding - I was not expecting to have to climb a mountain that day!

After the sand dunes, we drove for another hour until we reached Cape Reinga. By this point, it had been raining on and off all day - but we were lucky enough that it stopped for our dune boarding. We were not so fortunate at the Cape.  We were heading down to the iconic lighthouse when the skies opened up and let loose with Biblical levels of rain.  Despite our rain gear, we got absolutely soaked, and stayed that way for the entire 3 hour drive back to our campsite.

Getting drenched at Cape Reinga - and trying not to let the weather get me down!

Once we dried off, we hopped back in the car to drive down to Kerikeri, where we stayed in the loveliest little cabin and had a perfect anniversary dinner. 

Top: Our lovely little cabin; Bottom: Russell - home of the oldest hotel and gas station in New Zealand

Sunday we got up early for a champagne toast for Amanda and Jeff's wedding (4pm Saturday their time was 8am Sunday our time - and we don't have kids, so 8am is early on a Sunday for us).  Then we took the car ferry to Russell for lunch at the Duke of Marlborough hotel before heading back home!

Cheers to our favourite newlyweds!