Heading South Through the Kauri Forest

The famous tree of this region is the Kauri tree. They are like our Redwoods and Sequoias of the states. Slow growing monsters, that were nearly wiped out by the timber industry. The other more interesting part, is that as the farming industry took hold, and farmers prepared their fields they began to discover the ancient swamp Kauri forests. Entire forests of Kauri trees that were knocked down by some sudden event (earthquake, flood, etc), then buried and preserved. Some of these buried trees have been carbon dated to as much as 50,000 years! So on our way southbound back to Auckland, I wanted to drive through and see some of the live ones. There is a lovely road that winds through lots of trees in the Waipoua Kauri forest - a protected area - and takes you to the largest living Kauri by volume, named Tane-mahuta. It was an awesome sight. We took a picture of it, but we couldn't get close enough to it to show any perspective (they need to protect the roots). They estimate its age to be about 2000 years old. Cool.

The other product gained from these trees is Kauri gum, which is the sap from the tree that hardens and was used for making things like linoleum and varnish. It was another way the trees were quickly killed by the masses of men climbing trees and literally sucking the life out of them.

Farther south we stopped at the Kauri Museum which was a very thorough place to learn all about the beginnings of the timber industry in this region, with lots of interesting displays and old equipment. You could literally stay in there all day if you wanted to read every sign, but we were overwhelmed and done after an hour.

Before we started this journey to the forest, we detoured to a smaller glow worm cave right outside of Kerikeri. This allowed us to see the famous NZ glow worms and enabled us to save a day by not going to the overcommercialized one on the West coast. Glow worms are little worms (oh really?) that live on the roofs of the caves. They spin acidic webs that catch their dinner and something in their poop reacts with the surrounding atmosphere and creates light. So when you turn your light off in the cave, you see what looks like a milky way above your head. It was neat to see, but we are glad we didn't drive all over the country to get to them. The area around these caves was quite stunning. Lots of limestone pinnacles dad! With lush greenery all around. Spring is truly a beautiful time to be in New Zealand. Here's us in our classic "Keith hold the camera and we'll both get in it pose" in front of some of that limestone.