3/12 - Giant Trees on the journey to Turangi

Today I set myself up for another long drive. I want to walk on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing tomorrow, and so I had set up a couchsurf in Turangi, a little town near the Tongariro National Park. This meant that I needed to make it all the way down, through Auckland, and a good ways beyond by a reasonable time, so that my host didn't have to wait up for me. I got a fairly early start out of Hokianga, but I wanted to stop along the way to see some of the remnants of the ancient Kauri forests, trees rumored to rival the Sequoias and Redwoods in size and, especially, girth.

I drove south of Opanani, and stopped at the small pull-offs to see some of the biggest trees. These forests used to cover the entirety of Northland prior to the arrival of the Europeans. But now there are only a few areas that have preserved even a small number of the trees, much less and entire forest of them. Not only valued for their timber, but also having many shallow and delicate root systems, these trees were quickly destroyed. I tried to capture their majesty in my pictures.

I made my long driving day even longer by realizing that I had forgotten my head-lamp at Matt's mum's in Auckland. After retrieving it, I continued south, but didn't reach my destination until around 8:30pm, even though I didn't stop anywhere else along the way. What a long driving day. Good thing the next couple of days won't have nearly as  much car time!