A visit to Mangawhai

The sea was that peculiar colour it turns after a storm, the sun had yet to find a hole in the clouds and fog was rolling off the greens as I nosed the feisty silver Peugeot 207 into the car park at the Mangawhai Heads Golf Club. The 100 kilometre drive from Auckland had taken me less than 90 minutes and it had only just gone eight am. I’d been asked to check out activities for day-trippers in Mangawhai and Waipu and I had a single day to find them.

Mangawhai, it turns out, isn’t one place – it’s two: Mangawhai Heads and Mangawhai Village, separated by an estuary. Driving in from the Auckland end (you turn right off State Highway one at Te Hana, just past Wellsford) you reach Mangawhai Village first. It’s a typical Kiwi township with the usual ho-hum gas station, church and grocery store. It’s not until you drive out the other side, across the causeway and up the hill to Mangawhai Heads that you realise the place might be a little bit special.