rom Kaeo it is a further 64 kilometres to Awanui and there a short detour from the main road will take you to Lake Waiparera on the Aupouri Peninsula.
Here there are shags, ducks and black swans together with a few waders. From Awanui north to Cape Reinga one passes first through scrubland and then, nearer the top of the North Island, rolling farmland, some of which is in grass. A stop at Tangaoke Landing near Te Kao, 46 kilometres south-west of Cape Reinga, is worth making as the swamp here is good fernbird and rail habitat.

Parengarenga has a couple of possible translations. One is the pa where the renga, a lily, grew; the other is the pa of the native spinach. It would be nice to think that the harbour was named after this pretty white flower with its centre of lavender and yellow, but the Maori being a practical folk, probably named it after the spinach.

North Cape is home to some of our rarest plants. The serpentine outcrops which extend only over a few square kilometres support more than a dozen endemic plants including some very rare ones. Another rarity of the far north is the pupuharakeke, the flax snail. Predation by pigs and rats has reduced it to a few tiny populations restricted to flax clumps at Cape Reinga. Measures to help the pupuharakeke include poisoning rats, and planting flax and other native trees to increase its habitat.

From Cape Reinga itself there are fine views looking north over the turbulent area where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific ocean meet. Seabirds frequent the seas around here, but they are usually too far away to be easily seen. Here too, is the sacred pohutukawa from which the spirits of the Maori departed for the spirit world.

Each year Spirits Bay on Cape Reinga is host to a remarkable event. In March godwits from all parts of the country assemble here for their heroic flight north to their breeding grounds in the Arctic tundra of Siberia and Alaska, well over 12,000 kilometres distant! James Buckland left a vivid picture of this departure, written in the 189Os:

It is interesting to contemplate what this area must have been like when the Maori first arrived. A midden excavated near here, dating from the thirteenth century, contained the remains of 77 fur seals and another at Houhora, just to the south, had 44 fur seals, eight sea lions and seven sea elephants, indicating the former presence of substantial numbers of these animals along the coast. In other middens further south the remains of yet another species, the sea leopard, have also been found.

From Cape Reinga one can return south either by the road or via Ninety Mile Beach which is best attempted at low tide. Once this coast was a rich source of shellfish like toheroa and tuatua as well as being a particularly productive fishing ground. Now the toheroa are in such low numbers that their collection is prohibited here and the fishing has also declined because of over-fishing offshore.