Heading up North: from Auckland to Whangarei

My plan with buying a car and getting out of Auckland until the end of last week worked out as I managed to buy a car on Saturday's Auckland car fair. It is an old Honda Orthia with more than 270,000 km history so I hope it will be nice to me and make few more with me... (although the more I drive it, the more weird sounds I hear coming out from various parts of the car - and I'm sure I didn't hear anything during the test drive :)). 

So, this is it: BUD-light-Boeing-747. Almost 20 years, more than 270k... You better be good BUDdy. 

Anyway, it has carried me to Whangarei and the road up here is the purpose of this post. I took a road along the east coast and stopped on several nice places:

1) Shakespear Regional Park

A nice, big, almost untouched peninsula close to Auckland (you can even see it from here) full of sheep, cows, nice beaches and spectacular views. Perfect spot for a sunday picnic. 

I finally met my first NZ sheep! And I must say they look much better here than the sheep I remember from SK... Well, with this kind of environment they are living in, I don't even wonder they look that good :)

2) Puhoi

An old village established by settlers from Bohemia (current Czech Republic)

Local church of St. Peter and Paul

They even had welcome leaflets written in Czech in the local museum

3) Tawharanui regional park

Another coastal park with unique nature and animals living in it with the absolute highlight - Anchor bay:

Man vs. cajky. Uneven fight (as always ;))

4) Goat island marine reserve

Goat island marine reserve is a protected underwater territory where you can easily spot lots of fishes, crabs, water stars and snakes, mermaids and God knows what else.. It basically shows how would the NZ underwater life be without the touch of human. Unfortunately, I came a little late to borrow some snorkeling gear (and I anyway wouldn't go as I'm still getting off the cold I got in Auckland), so I cannot express any personal feelings about the underwater life. So here are just few pictures from the surface: Btw. two kiwi guys I met here in camp in Whangarei claimed that it is really a great experience, so maybe I will get back one day :)

4) Pakiri beach

The last stop on my road to Whangarei (well, there could have been several more, but I wanted to do this in one day and anyway it would have been just another beaches similar to the ones I visited...). Pakiri was a nice big surf beach with quite big waves at the time being.

So, I checked the sunset on Pakiri and then just finished the road to Whangarei.

Whangarei is known as the only city of Northland. Well, city... It has 50,000 inhabitants and it appeals more like a bigger village. Anyway, I'm staying here in a nice campsite and the plan is to spend here 2 or 3 nights, until I sort out the stops on my route further North and until my car gets repaired... Because of course I already found some hidden mistakes and besides having no antenna (and therefore being forced to listen to the one and only CD I have - Maori electro :)), I discovered that my rear door simply cannot be locked. So I definitely want to get this fixed so that I can leave some stuff inside the car with no worries.