Ripiro Beach & Kai Iwi Lakes

At the southernmost tip of Kaipara’s North Head, mysterious-named landmarks such as the Valley of the Wrecks and NZ’s oldest wooden lighthouse stand in mute testimony to a history of seafaring disaster that has left 150 shipwrecks entombed – many without a trace - in the dunes and sandbars of Ripiro Beach. What is here today, is hidden tomorrow, courtesy of the ever-shifting sands.

It’s an exhilarating drive and – wind, sand and tide permitting - the views from the Kaipara Lighthouse provide a panoramic vista over thousands of hectares of rolling dunes, freshwater lakes and pine forest, and out to the bar where the Tasman Sea furiously smacks against sandbanks. Further on is the remains of a 63,000-year-old fossilized kauri forest, while inland is the legendary Valley of the Wrecks, a one-time beach transformed by the shifting sands into a valley of secret treasures that brings out the pirate in all of us.

Along the way salty seaside hamlets like Glinks Gully, Baylys Beach and Omamari, form crusty bach communities with an implacably stubborn commitment to an alternative way of life. Like the salt-laden breeze that whips in off the sea, there’s a freshness about these places that makes you look at the world in a slightly different way. The pace is slow and beats to a sleepy holiday rhythm which pulls on the senses like an undertow on an otherwise rolling surf. Stop for coffee, enjoy the offbeat local radio stations, but don’t be seduced yet – for Ripiro’s sand highway continues on to the crystal-clear Kai Iwi Lakes, sparkling like sapphires in the dune basins of pristine white sands, fringed by pine forest. Sheltered camping, safe swimming, diving, fishing, windsurfing, canoeing and water-skiing are all on offer and in addition to rainbow trout, the lakes teem with koura, crabs, freshwater mussels, and native fish. A well-signposted half-hour stroll across farmland leads back to the coast, while a further one hour’s hike or drive up Ripiro Beach terminates at Maunganui Bluff, where locals collect mussels and surf-cast, or in an easterly, sharpen the tips of manuka-fashioned spears and hunt for flounder.

 

Sculptured sands, Ripiro Beach, Pouto