Ahipara

Salty lips and tangled locks. A raw and rugged energy that refuses to be ignored. This is Ahipara, at the southern end of Ninety Mile Beach, an iconic seaside village and surfie’s paradise. A place where architecturally designed houses and salty old baches cling like barnacles to the windswept coast. Where surfers ply the waves at aptly named Shipwreck Bay, a place where wrecks peek from the surf at low tide and the views are quite simply unforgettable.

A few days here and you begin to feel growing a kinship with the pioneering gumdiggers of the late nineteenth century, and the hardy occupants of Tauroa Point, who make a living gathering seaweed and live in salt-encrusted shanties without running water or SKY TV. Flanking the beach is a rugged headland of enormous awe-inspiring sand dunes and rocky outcrops that call forth the inner hoon: “come ride a quad bike,” it cries “and go let rip.” Quad biking tours also explore the Ahipara Gumfields Scenic Reserve, a wild and remote area behind Shipwreck Bay littered with the remnants of ancient kauri forests, old gumdigger’s huts and some 250 hectares of trenches, dams, and aqueducts, not to mention its extensive network of 4wd tracks.

Those who prefer more organic ways of getting their speed fix are never disappointed either. Ahipara’s stretch of unspoiled sandy beach at the beginning of Ninety Mile Beach is the perfect place to discover land yachting, and surfers come from all over New Zealand to ride one of the country’s best left hand surf breaks. This is also the place to rediscover the “Tuatua Twist” of childhood seaside holidays, burrowing bare feet into the sand in search of tuatua and bearing a bucketload of sandy delicacies back to the bach for a simple feast.

 

Blokarting at Shipwreck Bay