Day 13: Tane Mahuta & Kai Iwi Lake
A massive tree and an emerald lake
You may remember that I talked about the Maori warships and how they were built from Kauri trees a few posts back. Well, our first stop on this particular morning was Waipoua Forest where we went to see New Zealand’s current biggest Kauri tree: Tane Mahuta.
Tane Mahuta is actually the 3rd largest tree in the world, measured in terms of trunk volume, i.e. how much wood — could a woodchuck, chuck? — you can get from it. There is another Kauri just down the road from Tane Mahuta that is older and wider, but it’s not as tall, and it doesn’t have as large a volume apparently, so it misses out on the limelight. It is also about half an hour’s walk from the road whereas Tane sits just minutes away.
Kauri trees throughout New Zealand are currently under threat from a disease called Kauri dieback. I don’t know much about it except that it’s very bad for them and the Department of Conservation does a lot to ensure that surviving Kauri trees don’t become infected.
On our way onto the track to Tane, we had to scrub and disinfect our shoes as the disease can spread via dirty footwear and equipment.
A short walk from the road brought us to Tane himself…
He’s around 2000 years old at the moment and he has reached his full height — they only grow enough to get to the top of the surrounding canopy and then they stop. He will continue to get wider as he gets older though.
I’ve forgotten the exact number, but many other plant species actually live inside the crown of Tane which is pretty impressive.
Some Kauri trees that were alive in the past, before conservation restrictions came into place, were as old as 8000 and would have been four times as wide as Tane.
The photos struggle to do it justice, but Tane Mahuta really was Tane Mahussive.
After visiting Tane, we drove down to Kai Iwi Lake to chill out for the rest of the day.
We were expecting it to be a half-decent lake, but other than finding out that it was a “must-see”, we didn’t really look into what it was like. As it turned out, we were incredibly happy with what we were greeted with.
It’s amazing that such a stunning lake is just sitting there in New Zealand, but Anna and I were more than happy to make the most of it.
The colour change in the lake is caused by a sudden drop-off that turns the knee-deep, clear, colourless water into a deep blue in a matter of metres. The shallow waters near the shore also get nice and warm which makes them great for sitting in.
As is typical of the two of us, Anna spent most of her time relaxing in the sun, and I spent most of mine in the water and jumping off of the pontoon out in the deep.
After a very pleasant afternoon, we covered some old ground and drove back to Whangarei to camp.
We had a big day of driving down to the Coromandel Peninsula the next day, and Whangarei made for a good place to start.
