Palm Forest Hikes & Island Views on Waiheke Island

The Kauri Grove: a grove of forest giants

The evidence of these forest giants called the kauri soon emerges at a side track called the ‘Kauri Grove’. A short boardwalk leads to a raised decking area putting us midway up the forest surrounded by a mix of skinny palm trees, nikau, and the huge kauri tree trunks. Although these kauri are nowhere near as large as the trees you’ll see in Northland and the Coromandel, like we did at the beginning of this crazy year-long adventure, they certainly dominate all other trees in the forest. It’s certainly an impressive sight, especially from this unusual perspective raised up in the forest.

A moment of appreciation for the Waiheke Island birds

From the Kauri Grove, we continue making our way to higher ground where the forest canopy gets lower meaning we get a lot closer to the birds. Yes, we are going there again, we are going to talk about birds. Coming from European countries where the most common bird sightings are street pigeons and your next door neighbour’s chicken, we are always overly keen to watch New Zealand’s birds when we see them, and the Onetangi Reserve certainly has plenty! We spot these tiny birds with green feathers and a silver circle around their eyes called, well, silvereye, as well as noisy tui birds making strange warbles and clicking sounds. There are also fantails, cute wee birds with fan-like tails. Although there was a sign at the beginning of the track warning to be careful of kaka (parrot) chicks on the forest floor, unfortunately we don’t see any of these guys.

So much to see in the Kauri Grove!

A cathedral of nikau palms and the tree of life

As we find ourselves walking down the next valley, we delve into a forest full of towering nikau palms – now it feels more like an island paradise. It’s super stunning forest, different to most other forest we have seen throughout New Zealand. The collection of nikau palms are made all the more beautiful by this one tree growing through the forest on its side rather than toward the sky like a normal freakin’ tree. This tree is a whole eco-system in itself with ferns, mushrooms, spiders and all sorts living on it. Although we can’t remember the name of the tree, we were told yesterday in our EcoZip tour that this type of tree inspired The Tree of Life in the Avatar movies – we can totally see why. What’s more, the tree is totally climbable – and that’s all we got to say about that.

Epic views of Waiheke Island

Moving on, we start making our way out of the valley until we emerge on an open grassy ridge. The wind threatens to knock us off our feet. The outline of the coastline is silhouetted in front of the mid-afternoon sun. Beautiful! We slowly walk across the ridge, partly because of the wind and partly because of the amazing views, until we are back in the forest for the final leg of the walk. This time, we hop over streams and tree roots on this kind of adventurous track. All the tracks that we have taken in the Onetangi Reserve are not necessarily well-maintained which we always prefer to make it feel more adventurous – even when reality is you’re just taking a short stroll in the forest…