Auckland Museum, 1

We visited the Auckland Museum in 2008 and were impressed, particularly with its Maori artifacts and exhibits as well as those from all over Polynesia. We have visited Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum in Wellington, three times since then, but still have very high regard for the Auckland Museum. From Baylys Beach we drove to the Top 10 in Orewa for a couple more days on the beach, sorting, packing, and closing out our 2018 NZ visit. We spent our last day, April 2nd, in Auckland, mostly at the great Museum on the hill.

Auckland Museum

The great 25m 100-warrior waka, perhaps the most memorable item at the
museum; the last of its kind, built in the 1830s

View from the stern

Stern ornament; still processing this...Vicki conjectures it
depicts a viagra overdose...

Museum floorplan from which you can further appreciate the great size of this
war canoe, all cut from a single totara trunk

Body marking implements (tattoo)

How far from Disney do you have to get...?

Among many cases of Polynesian exhibits

Anatomical correctness from New Guinea

Another canoe

Spear collection

Particularly ouchy ones

Shields

Beautifully wrought paddles and oars

Bark quilts

Assorted tools, containers

Silly masks department

Wood sculpture, man with pounamu

More expert carving

Conch horn

A wealth of jade carving

Oar and bailing buckets

Tiki or carved village entrance, this from the traditional
village at Rororua

Pounamu, jade paddles for pounding an enemy's
head; or for ceremonial use

Celebrated pose

ATVing On Baylys Beach

From Dargaville we drove the few miles back to the coast again and spent the night at the Baylys Beach holiday park where we had stayed in 2014. On that visit we fulfilled one of Vicki's wish list items, namely, horseback riding on a great beach. Baylys is right up there with the so-called Hundred Mile Beach, actually only sixty; both feature scores of undeveloped miles of broad hard-packed sand beaches, backed by sandstone cliffs. They are totally drivable by 2wd and 4wd vehicles at low tide. (All NZ road laws apply to these beaches). Anyhow, the horse thing in 2014 was nice, another once-in-a-lifetime deal. This year we wanted to drive an ATV (not Rooby) on the beach, and so rented one for an hour's ride from the nice people at the holiday park. We got about 5 miles either side of Baylys Beach town and had a blast.

From the cliffs

Heading north on the beach

It was the Friday of a four-day Easter weekend, and all kinds
of people were out, walking, driving, wading, fishing, clamming

Cliffs similar to Riparo Beach

Big beach, looking north many miles

Heading back south

Diggers

Left turn for Baylys Beach town

Coal seam with waterfall

Southward

Torpedo fisher-persons

Torpedo

Lots going on at the beach

Our steed

On windy Baylys Beach

Return To Ripiro Beach

The next morning we drove back to the coast and to the Kai Iwi Lakes, fresh water lakes set in the petrified dunes just inland from the sea. There we waited for the Tasman tide to ebb. It was Vicki's 70th birthday, in New Zealand, and we wanted to return to Riparo Beach as we had done in 2014. We set forth with time to spare, walking the 2k through the pastures, over stiles and electrified fences, up and down DOC staircases, to the ravine that leads to the most deserted beach in NZ, sandstone cliffs for a backdrop, a beautiful little waterfall, and no one and no thing in sight as far as the eye could see. And beyond. Also sunny and warm weather. Definitely a repeat bucket-list destination.

One of the great places we have been

Not without its hurdles

Exactly 100 steps

First view of the beach

Path through the ravine; much improved by new DOC staircases

The little 12 foot waterfall

Looking north

And south

From the surf back to the waterfall

Pano

Not a swimming beach

Coal seam in the cliffs

We left our imprint

On the walk back out, the cattle had placed themselves between us and Rooby

And watched as we approached

I tried everything I could think of..."get along little doggies" "ribeye" "sirloin"
"T-bone"...even "filet mignon"...but at length there was nothing to do but cowboy-
and cowgirl-up and wade into the midst of them

They just followed along; eventually it dawned on us they were expecting us to
open the gate and let them into greener pastures

Nothing doing, bovine-breath

And there we left them

That evening we had pork ribs at the Northern Wairoa Hotel in Dargaville; we'll
always have Dargaville; but especially we'll always have Riparo Beach