In the morning, we paid the YHA, and bought ourselves YHA-cards. We couldn't buy those cards from Japan, since we hadn't been yet one year in Japan, that is the requirement for the card. I went out to open the boot pannier, and according to the smell, I was lucky, no-one was smoking nearby. I left the pannier to the open air for a while. Fortunately the panniers were made of such plastic, that the gas smell didn't stick into. So we could put our things back to the pannier.

From Kaitaia we headed to Cape Reinga, the northernmost place in NZ where you can go vith a motor vehicle. There is also the North cape, but you can get there only by hiking paths. Then we found this bus with a text: "Cape Reinga via Ninety Mile Beach". We followed it hoping it would show us where the ramp to the beach is. We found the ramp, although the bus was off to a camping site to get more passengers.

The sand on the beach looked very soft, but after getting over the long-jump landing pit like ramp, the wet part of the sand turned out to be harder. First we just wanted to test what it is like to ride on an endless beach, but after few kilometers we found ourselves heading north about 80-100 kph. We had no kind of tide information, but since we saw the bus, we assumed that at the moment the beach was all through rideable.

There was beach further than a man's eye can see, water on the left, sand dunes on the right. We stopped for a while to take some photos, and then rode on. After about 50 kilometers, my neck got tired. There was so hard side wind from the sea. The wind also sprayed salty water from the sea, and my visor soon became opaque. That was when we got enough of the beach, and from one bluff there were two Jeep tracks over the sharp edge of the dunes, and with some pushing help from Elina we got our battleship over the dune and on hard gravel road. We then passed Lake Wahakari to the main road for the Cape Reinga.

Ninety Mile Beach is one of the roads in NZ that the normal traffic insurances do not cover. That's why such roads are forbidden from the rental vehicles. My conscience was clear. The Beemer was a buy-back, not any rental. Later I happened to see this list of such roads in NZ. The Skipper's Canyon road in Queenstown was the only road in the list we didn't ride.

In cape Reinga we saw for bikers all dressed in black with black helmets and tinted visors. They were heading off the Cape. There were a Harley, two Ducatis, and a SR 500. Only one who answered my handwave, was the lady as a pillion passenger of the other Ducati. I found that the Ducati and Harley riders in NZ do not take their hand off the bars for nothing. Maybe those bikes are so hard to ride, that you need your both hands all the time... Well never ridden a ducati, cannot say.

We had some snack, walked the path to the lighthouse, took some photos, and wrote some postcards. I sent one with a signpost stating: "Tokyo 8 831 km" to our office in Tokyo. We headed back south, and after a while this black four rider group passed us. Obviously they visited the Te Paki stream, that's also a road down to the Ninety Mile Beach. They caught us quite fast, and the reason for that was obvious, when they were in front of us. They used both the lanes regardless of the visibility. After a while this group was in front of one tavern, and soon they were again passing us with amazing riding lines.

From Kaitaia we had reserved an accommodation to Kerikeri YHA. After getting a room, and settling down, we had a small hike nearby. We saw a fantail bird, and a morepork (a native NZ owl). We also saw the oldest house in NZ and some ruins of ancient Maori village.

We slept well after long day with my left boot in the pannier.