On Thursday we left Paihia and headed down the West coast back towards Auckland. The first port of call was sandboarding on a set of huge dunes, I'm not sure exactly where. A boat took us across to the dunes and we were just left for an hour on our own with tons of sand to play with. It was just Rebekka, Lisa our guide and driver, and I, but we had loads of fun even if the tide was out and we couldn't slide into the water.
Next on the route was a forrest in which Kauri trees grow. Native to New Zealand, they can grow to huge sizes but only a few of the older ones are left standing. We went and walked to the largest one left, at 1200 years old. It wasn't very tall, but still enormous, with a diameter of about 5m.
We camped near the beach at Waiwera and went for a swim at the Hot Pools there, a set of pools heated geothermally, which was a nice relaxing end to the day.
