Walk #129, 2nd May 2024

The walk incorporates two coasts and a meeting of the oceans. It’s in the westernmost part of the North Island and northernmost part of New Zealand.

Cape Reinga is a very spiritual place for Maori who believe it’s the place where spirits depart for Reinga, the underworld. The legendary early Polynesian explorer Kupe named the cape “Te Rerenga Wairua” as the point from which his descendants would travel in spirit form back to Hawaiiki-A-Nui.

The coast on either side of the Aupouri peninsula is spectacular and wild. An ancient and very tapu pohutukawa tree clings to the rugged point beyond the lighthouse.

Offshore are the Three Kings Islands which can be seen on the horizon depending on how clear it is. The islands were named by Abel Tasman who also named Cape Maria van Diemen.

Walk: Northland 1

Te Paki Sand Hills

This video is from a holiday in 2011. My old Sanyo digital camera did tragic video back then, hence our return to the area for a better video of the walk at Cape Reinga.

No visit to Cape Reinga is complete without a visit to the sand dunes. These massive dunes stretch from the Te Paki stream to Te Werahi Beach, in some places they reach as high as 150 metres.

Bring a board for tobogganing and jandals to wear back to your vehicle. It’s lots of fun but you will get sand everywhere.

Walk: Northland 3

Links

Cape Reinga/Te Rerenga Wairua heritage

The Far North: the tail of the fish

The local iwi (tribe) are Ngati Kuri

Ngāti Kuri are descended from the original inhabitants, the founding peoples of the northernmost peninsula of Aotearoa, in Te Hiku o Te Ika. These peoples, known also as Te Iwi o Te Ngaki, were already occupying Te Hiku o Te Ika before the arrival of the many migratory waka from Polynesia. Their ancestor was Ruatamore.

Ngāti Kuri also trace their whakapapa to the Kurahaupo waka which first made landfall in Ngāti Kuri’s rohe at Rangitahua, the Kermadec Islands.

The Three Kings Islands

Abel Tasman’s ships close to the Three Kings Islands

Tasman’s ships anchored off the islands on 5 January 1643, the eve of Epiphany or Three Kings Day, which commemorates the visit of the three wise men to the infant Jesus, 12 days after Christmas. Source: Te Ara

Isaac Gilsemans, who sailed with Abel Tasman, drew this picture of the Three Kings Islands. The human figures in the background apparently gave rise to a belief amongst Europeans that Māori were giants.

Tasman also noted that “Upon the highest mountain of the island they saw 35 persons, who were very tall, and had staves or clubs . . . When they walked they took very large strides.”

While we’ll never know who these tall people were, here’s a photo I took from my research at Auckland Museum in 2021. This ancient carving was found in 1946, hidden in a cave on Great Island.

The Three Kings vine Tecomanthe speciosa may once have been common on the Three Kings. By the time of its discovery, goats that had been introduced to the islands had reduced the entire population to a single specimen on Great Island, making it one of the world’s most endangered plants. The remaining specimen grew on a cliff that was too steep for the goats to reach. The original specimen still grows in the wild, and has developed more vines through the natural process of layering in the years since its discovery. The vine has been propagated and is now growing in NZ gardens.

And there was a lone Kaikōmako Manawa Tāwhi tree found on Manawa Tāwhi / Three Kings Islands north of Cape Reinga in 1945, but it took more than 40 years for scientists to successfully increase the rare tree’s numbers.

“We picked up the legacy of our grandparents to actually breed them and we have a programme where we have got 140 of those now and we are about a month away from delivering those back to the island,” Waitai said.

The project has also helped restore Bartlett’s rata, a rare shrub located at Cape Reinga.

Ngāti Kuri ancestral knowledge rescues endemic species from extinction