About 6 hours north of Auckland, through pastures of cow and sheep and past many rolling hills, the New Zealand journeyer gets to a very special Maori location, more commonly known as Cape Reinga, the Northernest tip of New Zealand. At this location one can stand next to a lighthouse where a sign post indicates how many km it is to all locations worldwide while below the Pacific Ocean cascades against the Tasman Sea. One feels a presence at the tip, a deep connection to the Earth, the power of being at the edge of the world though knowing that stepping off the cliff of this country would not lead you off the face of the Earth. But it is not so for the Maori people, as Northland Cape Reinga is where souls depart from. It’s where the spirits of those who have died take one look back at their native land, and fade away from it forever. Cape Reinga is a place of rest, for the alive, and for the dead.

Driving away from Cape Reinga when we visited Bay of Islands a couple of weeks ago, the clouds started to clear. It was as if the rain had known it’s place at the tip and now that we were inching back down the shore to Paihia, the ocean front town our hostel was located in, it could slowly retreat, and leave us behind. We traded in storm clouds for clouds of sand instead, partaking in the popular Northland activity of sandboarding. Sandboarding is essentially sledding, but instead of a rounded tube one uses a board, and instead of snow, one uses hills of sand. The dunes near the top of the Bay of Islands must be some of the largest in the world, or at least they are the largest I have ever seen, and walking up them feels like a strenuous hike, with no end in sight. But once at the top of a tall dune, we could take our boards and thrust them against our chest, push off and sail down rapidly to the bottom of the dune. Sandboarding is an incredible sensation of thrill, beauty, and slight pain, that is if you forget to dig your feet into the sand like me, and accidentally end up flying off your board, somersaulting down, and face planting gracefully into the sand.

The last stop on our Bay of Islands adventure, subtracting from it the day of Kayaking and waterfall viewing that we partook in the Sunday morning before heading back to Auckland, was a cruise down 90 mile beach, a popular spot for tourists and locals alike as this beach reserves a segment of it specifically for the use of motor vehicles to ride side by side with the waves. We all took a turn at the wheel, blasting “life is a highway” as we drove. After minor incidents of getting stuck briefly in the sand and having to push our way out, and sliding across the sand uncontrollably for a second much like gliding on black ice, we had reached the end of the driving segment and were guided back on to the main road.