Matai Bay Rocks! (Northland) Merita, North Island, New Zealand
By No Fixed Aboder on 03-Nov-10. Waypoint GC2HQQN

What. A. Tree.The kids could have stayed and climbed and played much longer. But it was only a few minutes before sunset and we still had 20 Minutes to walk back to the DoC Campsite... We may just return tomorrow. Thank you for taking us here, TFTC!

Amazing tree

Tftc

Found - Mrs McMike2012 & I now live full-time in our caravan & travel the country visiting places we want to visit & doing the things that we want to do we were visiting here today & decided to go for a walk along the beach this cache ended up being an easy find, log signed & cache easily replaced pleased to add another 'smiley face' to the tally TFTC ... TN:LN:SL ... #4,967 for us!

Great first find

What a spot! Beautiful day at Matai bay on our first successful camping trip in a few years.I found some items nearby that I thought looked like a vandalised cache.. But the actual cache was in its awesome hiding spot! TftcSigned CallumO_o + Holly

Currently we are on a Northland road trip and picking up a few geocaches here and there - bit of an understatement! We are staying on the Karikari Peninsula for a few days and came up to Maitai Bay this afternoon. A stunning day and we loved the walk around to this cache. Even saw a couple of stingrays in the water and took some good photos of one of them. The cache is definitely a tricky hide and I had to reach with the full length of my arm to pull it out and found it all quite difficult to balance whilst doing so as Im not overly tall so I was very happy when I succeeded. A favourite from me, TFTC

I would love to say this was an easy find, but that's not the case. Of the four of us out today, one opted to swim across the bay, while the others of us walked around. The three that walked had a look around GZ with no luck, suspecting and inspecting the correct location, but unable to come up with the goods. After the swimmer arrived, we investigated the logs, confirmed our suspicions, and Mr Swimmer successfully came up with the cache. A great hide, thanks for getting us over here! TFTC

Nice walk on the beach. Hide is at an amazing place. Tftc

What a nice place for cache, tftc

Thought the goods would be really far out of reach but easily grabbed after a few stifks in the whole and camera insertions TFTC fav point for the walk and hide

Got it! What a nice walk and what a magnificent tree. TFTC!

I would say its in a vaginal canal not the heart

It was reaching in.

Found the cache this morning. Had to pinpoint it without description or hint as no internet - looking at the comments now probably a good thing as I might not have rooted around in the tree as much as I did!! Amazing location and a fantastic walk along the beach. What an amazing old Pohutukawa tree too.

We found it but couldn’t reach down to grab it
Got a photo to prove find
Lucky no stoats for us!

Having read the previous DNF log, we approached GZ with caution. We banged some big sticks together approaching GZ, then banged the tree in the vicinity of its heart. We poked a long stick inside just in case, too. I took a couple of flash photos in the heart, checking for stoats or other undesirables. We could see the cache container, and the surroundings looked clear. My daughter bravely reached in and grabbed the cache. Signed and sealed up again, we rechecked that the coast was clear, and replaced the cache in its hidey hole.
But what an amazing location! The beach is stunning, even in the driving rain, but that tree
Thank you for placing a cache here!

WARNING: this cache may be inaccessible due to critters. I was really looking forward to getting this cache after the long walk along the beach. I found the heart of the tree, reached my hand in, and touched something... then I heard a very high pitched sqealing noise. I quickly withdrew my hand, and then went back to have a closer look... there was a stoat inside. I'm lucky I didn't get bit!

Beautiful day for a beautiful walk to a beautiful place! Thanks for bringing us here. I love this beach, we really need to come here more often.
Great clue!! TFTC

The heart of the tree

Awesome location

Kes jsem sice nenašla, ale vůbec mě to nemrzi protože i tak jsem šťastná,že mě přivedla na tohle kouzelné místo, strom je vážně úchvatný a houpačka potěšila

Located with Ricardinho

Please refer to his log

TFTC

A nice hide. Great tree specimen here - the far north has plenty of these! Nice walk too. Fabulous beach. Thanks for bringing us here. TFTC no fixed aboder.

Day 12 of our Northland trip and today is Whatuwhiwhi.
I have to be honest and say I had not checked out exactly where the Top 10 park was before heading up here. I thought it would be a lot closer to Kaitaia.
But its in a wonderful place, so this is no bad thing - except I had not looked at the geoart that dominates the landscape up here.
So a couple of days back I took an hour or so to solve them. Thankfully they were all pretty straight-forward, although slightly different.
So with those all solved and under our belt, today is collection day.
An early start and a few walks.
Up to the top of Mt Puheke was the first one; then later a one hour return trip to Karikari beach; then a 40 minute or so return walk along Maitai Bay.
After that we relaxed for the afternoon, did some chores and planned the next couple of days. And logged caches
Thanks all for placing and maintaining.

Despite the number of dnfs, it was such a beautiful morning, I thought I'd walk the 1.6ks from where we were parked and try my luck anyway.
I had both beaches to myself today, with the only evidence of foot prints being from dogs - didn't see any though!
As soon as I was at gz, a likely hiding spot presented itself, although it was a little tricky to balance and search. The first attempt came up empty handed, but the second struck gold.
I decided to rescue the 2 TBs in there as it hasn't been found in a while. Coincidentally, one of them we'd had before and dropped off in Austria, 2.5 years ago.
Thanks for putting this here in such a beautiful spot

Awesome tree but too well hidden for us this time! Found a likely hidey hole but sadly empty.

Wonder if its been moved. We found the we notch in the tree stump but there was nothing inside

Beach access closed next time

Great find- fantastic views TFTC

Found where we thought it was but just couldn't reach down far enough

Lovely walk around the bay to see the wonderful tree.

Camped at the DOC camp and grabbed this before the weather closes in. Plan to get others in the area tomorrow. Lovely bay and can only imagine what it is like on a sunny wind free day. Will be back!!! TFTC

Found after searching for a little while with Kiwi_adventurer trying to look more interested in the tree and views a muggles nearby tftc

After spending some time swimming and generally hanging in the sunshine kiwitrecker1 and I took the 1 kilometre wander down the beach to this cache. Interesting to find that there was a bit of surf at the cache end of the beach (and a whole lot of translucent jelly fish not found at the calmer end). There were some people set up for the day at GZ which made the searching task a bit tricker. Started at the top and worked my way around, kiwitrecker1 kept guard while I went for a closer exploration of some parts while the coast was temporarily clear. Located the cache and hurriedly signed the log - all just in the nick of time. Smiled and said hello to one of the nearby muggles to put there mind at ease that we weren’t eyeing up their gear. The tide was about and hour and a half from full but we were able to see the distinct difference in the rocks here compared to what we’d seen earlier. Off for another swim now, TFTC!!

We are on our summer holiday, we usually take a few weeks and travel around the South Island, but this year we are heading around the North Island. Heading up the West coast and back down the East coast. Finding only a select few caches along the way, we are mostly targeting some challenges we have qualified for, some large size caches, some that fill gaps in our date placed grid, a few D/T combinations, some with lots of favourite points, letterboxes and anything else that grabs our fancy.

I had a fall earlier in the week so I was now pretty much out of action with a very sore and swelling ankle, so I am only going to help find the nearby caches and gk is going to find any of the caches that require more of a walk. After spending time at the Te Kuiti medical / hospital centre my sprain has turned into a fracture and I am in a moon boot and told to keep weight off my leg.

So once again GK got to do a solo walk along the beach, and what a beautiful beach it is. With the amount of cars around the camp and the carpark he was amazed at there only being two other people on the beach.
He soon arrived at gz and from what he told me I am pleased that he did the finding of this one. He left a couple of trackables.
Thanks for placing this cache and thank you for the smiley, great views around here

I'm moving in December and I thought I'd grab these caches before it requires another hour to get up here. It was sunny at home and I was looking forward to a sunny, beach walking, caching day. I got to Kaeo and the weather looked less favourable. By the time I got to the peninsula it was raining. Luckily I was only out walking once when it showered.

This was my second find for the day. It was a lovely walk along the beach and I loved the rocks and the tree at gz. I saw a potential hiding spot when I first approached but hoped it wasn't that. I climbed up and around before coming back down. I shone my phone torch into the heartwood and poked a stick around to make sure no critter was around. I had a weta grab my hand a week ago and it was scary. A big cache here so it was easy to grab even for this short nearly 50 year old. TFTC

With the mega being postponed a plan was hatched for some of the Team SEAC crew to head north for some fun. Today was day 2 and the Karikari Peninsula was eyed up as the target area.

Wow this is an impressive tree!! Didn't take too long to find the clever little hole.

Really loved the walk and the spot you have brought us too - another of those if not for geocaching places!

Thanks for the cache a favourite point for the location.

What a tree. We enjoyed the walk out there. Great beach.

Day two of our team SEAC labour weekend raid of the north trip! Today we decided to explore the Karikari peninsula and with the puzzle solutions for the fish geoart already prepped, lots of sunscreen applied, lunch and drinks packed we headed out to explore.
WE found lots of wonderful beaches, took lots of photos and of course enjoyed all of the caches in the area.

a 15 min walk around the bay from the car park and and one of the largest and most majestic pohutakawa I have ever seen, what a wonderful spot. Thanks for bringing us here. TFTC!

Out with Team SEAC on a long weekend raid of the upper north island. We spent the day catching around the Karikari Peninsula. The walk around the beach took a little longer than the description said but it didn't matter as it was a very nice walk. The tree at the GZ is awesome. The cache hiding spot was easy to figure out and container quickly on hand. TB dropped. Fav point for the location.

Day two of our visit the the Far North ...... a group of cachers from Auckland, signing in as Team 'SEAC' to save logbook space......

Caching reasonably local today as we were based in Cable Bay.....headed up the peninsula in search of new territory and caches none of us had ventured to before....

Thanks to the CO's for bringing us to these stunning locations we would probably not visit.

TFTC.

Just as well Poppa J has a longer arm than me and definitely just as well this is not the land of Oz. What a massive tree! TFTC (forgot to log on the day)

Tftc out and about with scout n about

Certainly need a long arm, beware of the resident week.

Found but had to get friend to get it out, I'm too short!

Coolest hiding spot

Creepy

Found on a beautiful day walking the beach. Thank you for pointing out this magnificent tree! Unbelievable, wow! TFTC.

Thanks for the cache!

After camping nearby last night, we noted some an interesting anomaly on a geological map while teaching my GF about the area, and what to look for when identifying rocks. Making the wander along the beach, we noted the enormous tree, had a climb and found the cache. TFTC!!!

Wau !!!!!
Was für ein uralter Pohutukawa. Nach langem Suchen und einem beherzten HanSolo doch noch das Versteck gefunden und uns ins Logbuch eingetragen.
Was für eine Location!!!!

Wow !!!!
what an ancient Pohutukawa. After a long search and a courageous HanSolo we finally found the hiding place and signed the logbook.
What a location!!!!

> TFTC
> Han SoloAndFamily

Failed in the morning, even after looking at what turned out to be the right spot. Came back in the afternoon for another go - felt round and bingo. Thanks!

We took ages to find this one.Great hiding place

If yur short you may find this a bit hard but was a good one

TFTC

TFTC

Ooh that felt weird! Great spot

Good find, not hard but nice and hidden

Found together with rramaT whilst traveling around New Zealand. TFTC!

We wanted to hike the fig tree loop, beyond Merita Beach today. Unfortunately we couldn't find the DoC marked trailhead so ended up strolling along the beach instead. This gave us plenty of time to admire this incredible tree and search for the geocache.
Since the previous geocacher couldn't find the cache, we were expecting a long search. Stoffel87bw found the heart of the wood pretty quickly, and saw the geocache sitting inside of it, with the help of his phone. It took us more time to muster up enough courage to stick our hand into the heart of the wood, than it did for us to find the Cache. Stoffel87bw was my geocaching hero today. Thanks for showing us this special tree, and of course the rocks in the bay.

This has to be the biggest pohutakawa I've ever seen, like some are bug but this thing has to be over 1000 years old. Spent a good 30 mins looking but could not find this one today.

Found together as a family outing our first one

Quick find clever hint. What a beautiful bay and fantastic tree

This one is our 990'th found.
We just expect our 1000'th will be as Nice as this one.
Greetings from France

Rather hot today. Have done a few other caches in the area and thought I better add this one to the list. Headed across the beach and arrived at GZ to find a couple 'laid out' right under said clue. I didn't want them to think I was stalking them, so approached them and said I was 'searching for treasure nearby ... don't mind me' ... lol. They didn't stay long. Must have thought I was nuts. Hunted for this one longer than I should have, but found it. What an awesome specimen (clue) and awesome hide. Gets a FAV from me

Wow!! What a nice cache!

Wow how cool is that. Thank you

Wow how cool is that. Thank you

I found it a bit hard to access so shorter people may struggle. Tftc

Walked the beach to this amazing pohutukawa tree. These trees make great hides with hundreds of sneeky holes and this one was no exception. Finally snagged and tagged. Cheers. I love trees so this gets a fav.

Its Thursday - day Six -Kaitaia area with The Seagnoid and Zara today. Toby and William at Motor Doctors!

Its another epic 4 week geocaching adventure with The Seagnoid, Zara, Toby and Willam to the Far North. What an amazing place to explore. Lots of walks, gravel roads and sand. Lots of amazing trees, beaches and interesting POIs. Lots of kilometers traveled by vehicle and foot. Vehicle breakdowns, making new friends and catching up with old friends and family. Snagged a couple of FTF's, lots of lonely caches and the odd event along the way. Lots of cache maintenance and replaced caches on this trip. But what an incredible adventure!!. Thanks to all the CO's who have made this trip so memorable..

After finding thhat there was more to the point, we walked the length of the beach to visit this tree. Took a photo of the amazing root structure, but I don't think the photo will do it justice. On the way back we came across someone in a 2WD station wagon tring to get a jetski out of the water. The jetski was on the trailer, the trailer was hitched to the car, and the waves had ripped out the sand, so both the trailer and back wheels of the station wagon were down to their axles and water was about to ender around the rear door of the car. So we scooped out the sand in front of the drive wheels and put the footwell mats under, but that didnt help. Combined with some in a 4x4 towing it worked fine though. They were darn lucky to get their car back!

Day six of an awesome, tiring, long, three week holiday geocaching with Taybeedragon in the upper north. Caching the Karikari Peninsula. The whole trip comprised of hours of walking on sand, sliding down sand dunes, hundreds of kilometres of unsealed roads, car breakdowns, paddling out to islands, dolphins, goats, events, FTFs, weird boulders. You name it, we saw it. Lots of bisons, lots of cache maintenance, lots of sunscreen. A month is enough. I am glad to be back home. Except that now I have to write up my trip. We averaged just 20 caches per day, but that is still a lot of logging!

Merry Christmas from the Seagnoid!

The prize you find leaves yo speechless with a beautiful view well worth the find

Came for a lovely stroll along the beach, empty apart from bits of seaweed and a few shells. Very peaceful just the waves lapping on the shore. Nice easy find, removed lighter, cache ok, Moose TB dipped, photo and favourite attached. TFTC. TM from N Wales.

This one was well hidden. Found after our eyes adjusted tftc

Found it totally by accident, we weren't even looking for a cache ! I signed the log and hid it a bit further from wandering eyes. TFTC

What an amazing tree. Easy find after a long stroll along the beach during sunset. Thanks for brining us here. Definitely worth a fav point.

Thanks, geocache creator! We found a bunch of random trinkets in the cache and left a citronella tealight candle and a bit of an essay in the logbook Fun times!

Staying at the DOC camp so wandered down here before dinner. What a beautiful tree. Loved the big rocks as well. Fav for me. Tftc

An opportune cache to find with our new caching converts: six and eight year old Ophelia, Humphrey and Sefton. It took a little while to find this but it was in an obvious spot. TFTC!

We were playing on the nearby rocks with my niece and nephews when I noticed this cache. Six of os were scouring the area without much luck when Ophelia pointed out a likely spot that was out of reach for an eight year old. Sure enough there it was! Tftc.

Did not find, had a look around with the kids but then we saw a live metal trap on the branch of the tree so be very careful. Bonus a Ruru was hiding in the hole in the middle.

Yebo No Fixed Adobe

As we are babysitting a 4-legged-muggle-companion we decided to do a caching tour including beach forest nature reserve swamp and whatever sounded like a lot of fun

Last time I logged a dnf but marveled the tree, true mighty!
This time it went rather quickly to log another smiley

Tftc

What a fantastic tree on a fantastic beach at a fantastic place! Unfortunatly no cache for us today even if we looked deep into the heart of tis tree.

I have set myself a challenge for this year to have at least the same number of caches on each day of my calender as the number of years I have been caching.

It has been a while since I was travelling along the Karikari Peninsula. A beautiful part of the country.

Cheers for the cache.

What an amazing place with such pristine beaches tftc

While travelling through New Zealand we found this nice place and the cache. TFTC Die Waldelfen

TFTC, a nice place

TFTC

30/01/17 - Found this morning after staying at the campsite nearby. Lovely morning walk tftc

Two girls from Holland are having a great time in Your beautiful country. TFTC

Two girls from Holland are having a great time in your beautiful country. TFTC

(154)
2nd time for this one. Brought the rest of the family this time. The cache was out in the open, so tucked it away a bit better.
Tftc.

Great cache, thanks

Up early on Xmas morning and here I am walking along this beautiful bay at sunrise to an absolutely awesome tree. Nice way to start Xmas. Gets an FP from me

Empty heart, hmmmm hopefully it's still there and I am just blind ...

If I could give it more than one favourite I would!!! The rocks look like beached whales. Met some locals later that said there is a legend about them being beached whales. As for the tree - what a magnificent specimen.

We are camped at the nearby DoC site. What a remarkable area!
Walked along the gorgeous beach, and found this amazing tree. What a size!
Found cache after a bit of searching. Took the TB.
TFTC.

What a beautiful tree!

I agree ..- great tree. On way to Fig Tree walk.