I just got back from a week of hiking and camping in the Northland region of New Zealand. The views along the northernmost part of the country were pretty amazing. Miles and miles of isolated and empty beaches. It's winter here, so not many people are out hiking which leaves campsites, huts and trails almost empty.
Not surprisingly, I saw a lot of beaches while walking along the coast. I also saw a lot of sunsets over the ocean and a lot of lighthouses. All typical coastal scenery, but it was still very impressive.
The route started off with a bunch of sand dunes. I don't know a lot about dune environments, but there was a lot of sand piled up in big hills and a lot of wind blowing the sand around. I assume those two factors are important in sustaining a dune.
The weather was nice for most of the trip, but there were a lot of cloudy times. I guess the Northland region of New Zealand sees weather unlike the rest of the country. It was unusually warm and dry which is probably why they call Northland the "Winterless North."
While walking over some rocks this bright blue thing caught my eye. It was a beached Portuguese Man o' War. This thing is actually a venomous colony of distinct organism that combine to form a floating jellyfish-like animal. It moves around by filling up the air sac segment with carbon dioxide and then uses that as a sail. How cool is that?
There were a lot of lighthouses (lightheese?) but I will write about them later.
One night I was sort of forced to camp on someone's lawn. It's a long story, but here is a picture of her grandson. He was your standard cute toddler with curly hair, overalls and red cheeks.
There were some red toilet brush flowers outside of the hut that I stayed in on the last night.
You can see all of the photos that I took in Northland here:
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