Kauri trees are a massive variety of pine trees native to New Zealand. They are slow growers, and hence often die out as saplings to other faster growing fauna, though they succeed very well at growing in tough areas such as steep mountain slopes that are damp and dark. For this reason, the areas where Kauri trees were limited. When the European loggers found these trees, they were like a dream: huge amounts of timber, knot free, and not prone to warping. This lead to the vast majority of giant Kauri being logged, leaving the country with only a scarce few remaining. The oldest in the country is around 600 years old and to give you an idea of size: these things are 8-10 meters in diameter, and some 16 meters before the first branch. My guess is that there is likely only about 50 big Kauri left on the North Island, though its hard to say how many i don't know about. I do know that they have special walking paths just to go see a single Kauri tree. We went to the Kauri 'grove', which consisted of about 8 or 10 trees.
We also checked out the Siamese Kauri... this was 2 separate Kauri who grew together as one base when they ran out of room in their younger years. Very cool to see.
We also visited Hamilton's Botanical Gardens (yes, this Hamilton has gardens too!) - which used a serious amount of effort and gardening to create 6 paradise gardens modelled after different countries (Japan, England, China, US, Italy and India). Each was separated by gates to give each on an individualised experience. I think we were most impressed by the Italian renaissance one, but liked the maze that the Chinese Scholar Garden was..
We ended the night at Raglan, NZ's largest and most famous surf beach - know for the longest left handed waves (breaks) in the world! We wished he had a boogie board to take in the sweet waves, but were content jumping in them instead and being pulled by the undertow. The beach itself was called Ocean beach and the sand was so soft it was like silk under the toes!
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