– FEBRUARY 22, 2015

We had to get some real physical activity in, as my hip is feeling better and Jill really wants to go sand boarding.  Just imaging snow boarding, but with sand instead of snow.  See Jill in her ready to slide position below:

The area has extremely large sand dunes spring out of literally nowhere!  You’ll be driving down a grid road and then out of no where you see huge sand dunes surrounded by ocean, greenery, and a water road (aka the 90 mile beach road for 4×4 only).

Then we moved on to camp for the night at the Puketi Forest.  It is a National Conservation Campsite, which means no power or internet (or really any services except for cold water showers)…but at the price of $6 per person per night you can’t argue!  We set up the tent and went to work with meeting our neighbors so we could all trust each other.

The marmot from Tapotupotu Bay must have followed us here, because we had the same fighting marmot skirmish outside of our tent at around 3am again.  There must be something about our tent that attracts these gladiator battles.

But before we turned in for the night, we went on a one hour walking tour through the Puketi Forest.  We came across some huge and ancient Kauri trees that were very impressive.

We packed up the next morning and made our way back to Auckland to move our journey southbound after our northern adventures.

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For more photos of our adventure go to our flickr account here.