Northland New Zealand's WILD West Coast 🇳🇿 Maunganui Bluff & Kai Iwi Lakes

Sam found these fruits had fallen from a tree. I don't know if this one's ripe yet. Welcome back to New Zealand. It is quite a windy day here on the west coast of Northland. This is our second day exploring the area just south of Hokianga and I'm a little tired this morning because we were up late last night trying to catch a glimpse of the of the endangered brown kiwi the famed bird of New Zealand and we actually saw three of them last night and a giant carnivorous snail. It was quite an eventful night but I am super tired. However the show must go on and first up today we are going to be exploring this coastal walk that's going to take us up along this this bluff ridge here. It's going to give us some epic views of the Tasman Sea. The turbulent tumultuous tremendous Tasman Sea behind me and it's just the first stop of several today. Another epic day here in New Zealand. Wow this this coast walk is absolutely beautiful and I have a feeling this is going to be one of those times when I have so much footage because like with every step I'm making I'm making that rookie mistake of stopping and filming everything I see because it's so beautiful but then when I sit down to edit there's like seven hours of footage. Wow so to get to the top of this it's uh about an hour and a half to get to the summit. It looks pretty steep but this actually reminds me of the Tayfara track that we did over near Fangirai, the Fangirai heads. Very similar although the water is much calmer on the other side so it's good for snorkeling but beautiful blue Tasman Sea peppered with the white crests of those white calves out there and it seems like the wind is dying off a little bit so wow I mean look at that. Well all I can tell you is this is my kind of trail. Narrow single track right on a cliff holding your life in your own hands and uh taking in some epic views. This is what I'm talking about. This is a nice quintessential coastal walk here in New Zealand. Just so epic I just I don't think the video does it justice but I'm trying my best. So the track kind of steers away from the coast here takes us through this canopy and this area is the last remaining dense coastal forest or I should say some of the last remaining dense coastal forest in Northland so it's nice to see they haven't clear cut this and there's no cows grazing up here. So these berries the cow palm this most southerly occurring palm tree by the way but so so these berries are not edible for humans but they are a favorite food of the New Zealand wood pigeon so we might end up seeing one of those plump guys today but uh they are edible for humans when they're green before they turn red so that's always a good thing to know. So look at these we'd seen Sam found these fruits had fallen from a tree and somebody has been eating them so you can see the exposed seed here and they have this really sweet smell almost like mango and this big seed reminds me of mango too but I think we're not positive but we think they come from the karaka tree and the Maori used to use these but there's a process by which I guess you have to soak them to remove some sort of toxin that's in them so I'm not going to be not going to be sampling any of the the wares today but it looks like some bird or maybe even like a possum or something really likes these. This native bush we just came through quite a contrast to what's on the back side which is all this farm land has been clear cut and burned and you can see what a difference it all used to look like So we just made it up we're almost to the summit I think and we made it up to this high point and Sam has cell signal doing more research on that fruit the karaka fruit and it appears that the fruit is edible it's it's the seed that is poisonous that the Maori used to have to soak to get rid of the the toxic alkaloids so looks like I'm going to try this fruit that we're pretty sure is edible let's let's give it a go see if it tastes like mango so karaka fruit it smells delicious it smells absolutely wonderful I don't know if this one's ripe yet it's not that soft but it does actually taste pretty good some of the other ones were more ripe so maybe on the way back down I'll try to get a softer one but maybe whatever animal was eating these already ate all the ripe ones oh I like the sound of that to the summit here epic views good to be out of that backside farmland area wind is feeling really good worked up a good sweat you can see off in the distance the Kaiiwi lakes right over there and I think that's going to be our next we take in these epic views on this volcanic bluff this is the remnants of a volcano much like you have in the Coromandel Peninsula with the pinnacles much like the Te Fara track over in Whangarei massive what they call a bluff is actually the remnants of a volcano you should be wary of humans just to let you know they don't have your best interest at heart I want you to learn that lesson early on well here we are Kaiiwi lakes there's three lakes and I believe this is the main one a lot of boating and swimming here the water is crystal clear blue nice beautiful white sand beach and incidentally Kaiiwi means food in the Maori language and iwi means tribe so I would imagine the reason why this place got that name is that it was a very important food source for the local tribe or iwi in this area to get freshwater crayfish and fish and freshwater mussels and and whatever else that they have in this lake I've heard it's good for fishing apparently it's very popular for boating a lot of jet skis super windy here there's actually like waves on this lake and I've heard the water is warm so let's go let's go find out if the water is actually warm I'm sure compared to the ocean it's warm but it's cool to have this lake here right near the beach you saw how rough those waves were so not a good place to swim there's a lot lots of rip tides and stuff just right over a small sand dune and you're in this beautiful blue lake so they do have a campground here at Kaiiwi lakes but right now the height of summer in New Zealand it is completely full looks like a pretty chill spot to camp here right on this beautiful blue lake the water is pretty warm actually I wonder how often they get these waves on this lake the wind is just it's coming you know it's a westerly wind so that's why I was kicking up the swells on the ocean kicking up waves on this freshwater lake the water is super clear look how clear this water is so we passed one of the other lakes on the drive in on the opposite side of the road didn't look as clear as this one this looks like to be the the kind of the best lake out of the three from what I can see but I think I'm going to jump in and go for a swim so that wraps up today's video plenty more coming from New Zealand so make sure you hit that subscribe button and the notification bell so you know when I drop a new video but in the meantime get out there find your adventure and be infamous infamous