Trounson Kauri Park
We walked along a walking trail in the forest. kauri roots shallowly cover the ground and they are very sensitive, so we weren't allowed close to them.

Large Kauri Trees in Trounson Kauri Park
We saw lots of big kauri trees in the park. Of course we couldn't get close to them but they were huge enough from a distance.

There were many fallen trees and damaged trees by natural disasters. I wondered that because they didn't root deeply in the ground was the reason why they fell easily. After about 40 minutes walk, we headed to Waipoua Forest, which was the most popular kauri forest.
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Further along the trail, Robert showed me kauri leaves. As you can see, kauries are very huge. So I had guessed that it probably had big leaves like a banana leaf. In fact, it has small oval leaves, about 10cm long and 1-2cm wide!

Waipoua Kauri Forest Park
Is a popular Kauri Forest Reserve because there are more large trees than Trounson Kauri Park. When we entered the park, the view from the window changed back to its unique scenery of New Zealand's primary forest. There were lots of mysterious fern, palms and huge kauri trees. It seemed dinosaurs might be still alive threre!
Kauri can grow to an enormous size and it can live for thousands of years. A mature tree can grow to heights of over 40 meters and its trunk grows to 3-4m in diameter. A young tree has lots of branches along its trunk. But as a kauri grows, it continually loses its lower branches. So at maturity there are only branches at the crown.
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Two kauri trees like a gateway. As you can see, these two kauries are very huge! Please compare these trees with our vehicle. These trunks especially left an impression of great kauri trees.

Tene Mahuta
After a few minutes drive through the kauri gateway we came to a small car park on the side of a road. As soon as we walked into the forest on the side of the car park, we could see a giant kauri, Tane Mahuta. Tane Mahuta in the Waipoua forest is the tallest kauri tree, native to New Zealand.

"Tane Mahuta", which means "God of the forest" in Maori. It has a height of 51m, trunk girth of 13.8m and it is estimated to be at least 1500 years old. It was too huge to take a whole picture of Tane Mahuta. So it is hard to show you how big it was!

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The view from the car park. A tree standing a head taller than other trees is Tane Mahuta. A girl who joined the same tour said, "I wish I could have a tree house in the crown!" However, I pass on it. Because I'm sure I would lose sleep over an earthquake happening!
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What kind of foods did they sell? If the Tane Mahuta was a popular tourist attraction of Japan, I would expect to see a "Tane Mahuta Burger(maybe...huge size)"! I think that Japanese would like to see such a thing.