New Zealand on a tight budget.Day 5

Today was a Great Day! Waking up to glorious sunshine after a night listening to the kiwis calling under a brilliant Milky Way sky. We drove to see the really big trees. The Four Sisters growing from a single root stock - that's me waving, Te Matua - the second biggest Kauri tree in NZ and Father of the forest then finally Tane Mahute Lord of the Forest, whose father was the sky and his mother was the earth. Only he was strong enough to force his parents apart from their loving embrace and thereby create enough space, light and air for all living things to come into being. while we were there a Moari guide came along and did some prayers and chanting - this is a very holy place - it was genuinely moving. This tree is as monumental as a sky scraper with a garden at the top - I'm quite sure the idea for the trees at the Singapore Botanical gardens came from them. 

A lady at the WI market told me to make sure I went to Hokianga Harbour she said it was often overlooked as people headed to the Bay of Islands and beyond, and boy when we came over the final rise could we see why she recommended it. From the huge rollers coming over the sand bar at the entrance, to the massive sand dunes opposite, the mountains in the distance and the tropical beach lining the estuary as far as the eye could see it was more than you could take in at a single glance. We had lunch and several swims, watched people sand tobogganing on the opposite sure and walked up to the old look out point.

We weren't quite sure where we were going next but found ourselves in the rather nice waterside settlement of Rawene where we went round the historic Clendon House (free of charge thanks to a reciprocal arrangement with the NT). The house was fairly standard settler fare but the story told to us over the kitchen table by the curator was Hollywood blockbuster stuff of fortunes found and lost and found again, marriages, deaths and dynasties founded and floundered. James Clendon was from Kent but became the US (!) Consul and one of the few European signatories of the historic Whaitangi Treaty and yet few New Zealanders know about him - he made a fortune, died in debt thanks to the shift of power from Russell to Auckland but perhaps he has the last laugh as the government which robbed him of his empire in the north now pays for the upkeep of his last humble home where his descendants lived until the 1960s.

We then decided to head over to the Bay of Islands as we thought the weekenders would have gone home - it is a lovely site on the waters edge. We'll stay a couple of nights I think.