Auckland and Northland

My flight from Kuala Lumpur was late leaving and later arriving in Auckland. But New Zealand is the sort of place which actively welcomes travellers, and even at 1am it felt so very good to be back.

I'd always wanted to go to NZ but it took me until February 2007 to finally get there, when I went out on a working holiday visa with very few expectations of how long I'd stay and what I'd do. I stayed two years and got a proper job, but came home for career and family reasons. However I was there long enough that even arriving at stupid o'clock in a city I don't know so well it was a bit like coming home. The whole sense of the place is unique; it's enough like the UK that it feels comfortable, but there's enough Kiwi character too to set it apart from home.

After a long sleep I dove into NZ with a cup of coffee. Kiwis do coffee exceptionally well, even in the smallest town, and this cup was wonderful. Revived, the Auckland Museum was calling as they had on an exhibition of entries from the New Zealand Geographic Photographer of the Year competition. This was great, mixing stunning landscape and wildlife photos with some more documentary-style images of NZ's people and places. It didn't shy away from touching some of the less well-known topics such as the hardship of being a refugee here, alcoholism and homelessness, and the intense poverty suffered by some in the very rural areas of the country.

In the evening it was time for my first catch up with friends of my trip - drinks by the harbour with Dave, a colleague from the Olympic News Service, watching the sun go down. I decided I liked Auckland more than I'd remembered!

Day two was more catching up with friends, after I'd got lost finding their place and driven over the harbour bridge twice ... Sarah and her boyfriend were great hosts for the day, with a trip to the French Markets in Parnell (a kind of foodie farmers' market which pops up on weekends) followed by a drive to Devonport for views of the city, and a few beers nearby.

But I had to get out of Auckland after that. The only problem with having spent a reasonable amount of time in NZ is that I've seen quite a lot already, so I struggled slightly to decide what to do (and where to stay). After mulling over maps and booking websites for far too long, I plumped eventually to drive north and go and see the kauri forests.

Tane Mahuta

Kauri (Agathis Australis) are ancient trees, both in terms of the species and individually. They can grow for thousands of years and reach incredible heights and size.They only grow above the 38 degree latitude line and are rare and surprisingly delicate for trees of such majesty, being prone to something called kauri dieback. The Department of Conservation are tackling this by requiring you to walk on dedicated paths and clean your shoes before and after going into a kauri forest.

On the way north I stopped off at the Kauri Museum in a little settlement called Matakohe. The museum is actually fairly pricey to visit, costing the same as a visit to the Auckland Museum, but it turned out to be a fascinating place with every aspect of kauri production covered - harvesting the gum they produce, which was used for varnish, and digging old gum out of the ground; digging up logs of kauri from swamps, where it's preserved and usable; and transporting kauri logs down rivers through special kauri dams. The museum also covers the life of the early NZ settlers. It's very well done and taught me a lot I didn't know about the use of kauri.

In the kauri forests I went to see three key trees or groups of trees: the Four Sisters, which are relatively small kauri growing together in a group; Te Matua Ngahere, or Father of the Forest, which is the fattest kauri known to be in existence right now; and Tane Matua, Lord of the Forest, the tallest and biggest kauri. You can't get very close to the latter two, to protect them, but you get close enough to appreciate the size of these astonishing trees. Even with a fairly wide angle lens I struggled to get them in one shot!

I stayed that night at a fabulous place south of the main kauri forest in the middle of nowhere. A chap called Richard Bird and his partner, who moved out from the UK almost 20 years ago, run a holiday let from their home set amid 35 acres of bush. One of the places you can stay is a 'tin shed' set in seclusion up a steep track, looking out over the bush and a field. It has an outside bath and cooking area but the bed was incredibly comfortable, and after an evening relaxing in the bath and drinking wine on the deck I slept like a log! Sadly it was too cloudy to see any stars.

In the morning I had a wander around another kauri forest nearby, before setting off south. The last Northland stop was at Bayly's Beach, which is a small section of the 107km-long Ripiro Beach - NZ's longest 'drivable' stretch of sand, even longer than the more famous Ninety Mile Beach which is really only 88km long. It was good to look at the sea crashing on the sand before the long drive ahead of me.