New Zealand's BEST Views in Northland 🇳🇿 Ocean Beach to Te Whara Track, Whangarei Heads

We are just outside the town of Whangarei here on the North Island of New Zealand in an area known as Northland, which is north of the district of Auckland, and we are going to be tackling the Te Whara track today. It's supposed to be a beautiful coastal ridgeline which supposedly has some of the most beautiful views in all of Northland and also some of the best examples of broadleaf vegetation. These forests are supposed to be spectacular along this coastal ridge, some extinct volcanic pinnacles much like the pinnacles of Coromandel. So it should be a pretty epic day on the Te Whara track in the Bream Heads Scenic Reserve. Incidentally, something I just wanted to mention, Te Whara is spelled W-H, the far apart, but in the Maori language the W-H has an F sound so that's why the town is spelled W-H Whangarei, but it's pronounced Fangarei. So I don't think I've mentioned that in a video before. Sometimes I screw it up, but today I'm trying to get it right. So this initial ascent is kind of the toughest part of the hike getting up to this ridgeline here. Some beautiful beaches down here, Ocean Beach, and then there's like these little islands and some rock reefs good for snorkeling, which we've done the past couple days. We'll probably do at the end of today's hike as well, but you can kind of go along here. There's lots of rocks and the best time to go is at low tide. Not really any sea caves, but kind of some tunnels and a couple small caves, but interesting coastline. And as we get further up along this track we're have some epic views of even more cool rugged coastline like a Pinnacles. And there's actually some some World War II remnants like a radar station and a gun battery, so should be pretty eventful. We're almost to the top of the ridgeline. We started we started back down at that beach there, so we've made most of the elevation gain just a little bit further to go. Something else that makes the initial ascent pretty brutal is the zero shade. Finally getting into some now, but so it's steep with no shade. I would start early in the morning for sure. Okay, this must be the radar station, radar battery, part of it I guess. Probably had the radar mounted up there and then some machine to turn it over here. Cool. So that actually just joined back up with the main trail, so no big deal. It's a nice little easy detour. Laundry and ablutions. Oh okay, so another kind of World War II site here, but basically just some slabs left over. They really fortified this this point during World War II. Mess and quarters. Yeah, so I know I saw the sign, so they had like a base here, but not much left of this particular section. Well, we're definitely entering a section of older trees, bigger trees, so much better shade, and a lot more bird activity. I haven't had a good view of the coast in a while, but I think eventually there's several more, at least two or three more viewpoints with good views, and at least one beach cove you can go down to called Peach Cove. So plenty more things to do on this, but I am really enjoying the shade right now. That initial ascent was pretty rough because the sun's just coming up. It's probably like almost noon, 11, 11 30, something like that, and it was getting to be a little unbearable there with just the heat and the ascent, and a nice cool forest. Yeah, up here. Pretty epic views here on top of one of these pinnacles on the Tayfara track, and I think the views from this are actually better than the Coromandel pinnacles, which we did a couple weeks ago. I mean, you might even call these the the pinnacles of Northland, and you're closer to the coast, so even if it's a little hazy or foggy, you still get decent views of the water. Unlike the pinnacles, you know, it was pretty overcast, a little cloudy that day. We didn't get extremely great views, but this is truly spectacular. Back that way, you have the Wanganui, or excuse me, Fanganui heads. Lovely view of the oil refinery over there. Down there, we got Ocean Beach, the outer islands. Absolutely beautiful. So it took two hours to get to this point where you can go up on this pinnacle here and have epic views. You can continue on the trail for another three hours, I think, four hours, and check out the cove and the other stuff I mentioned, but I think Sam wants to go snorkeling. What a shocker. Snorkel addict wants to go snorkeling, so we're going to explore along this coast and maybe film that for you guys. Hey, can you say something? I want you to say it. No, you say it. Okay, look down here. Our zoom isn't strong enough, but there's this amazing bait ball of fish, and the birds are following us. When last we left you, we were up on a pinnacle ridge with epic views, but someone's snorkel addiction has kicked in fully, and now we're going to do the snorkeling. This is nice. Nice deep mermaid pool over here. Deep mermaid pool over here. Pretty sweet. It's crazy. We saw this point from two opposite angles. We were kind of above it, which you can't see. I don't think you can see where we were over there, and now we're below it. Pretty sweet day. I'm in here with the crabs. Infamous.