Paihia - Kerikeri - Kahoe

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Kahoe Farms – the best backpackers in the world!!

How many times have you sat with your friends or family and reminisced about those summer holidays you spent growing up? We all seem to have what we all seem to term as ‘rose tinted memories’ of those holidays. I re-call days spent at the beach in Sheringham and Cromer with my parents, brother and sister. We would swim, dig holes, catch ‘Cromer Crabs’ in the rock pools, eat fish & chips before finally stumbling home to our little cottage by the stream where I would kick a football around with my siblings. The evenings would be long and the light in the sky would be a deep, deep blue and when we all collapsed on the grass, flat on our backs, looking up to the sky, we would see stars and the milky way gazing down on us. Later, when we were all tucked up in our starched sheets in our shared bedroom, saying our goodnights to mum and dad, we all felt so loved, cherished and complete that we never wanted it to end. That feeling of not wanting it to end has crept into my everyday thought process in recently.

Kahoe Farms makes you feel welcome, the family who own it are brilliant, and it feels like a holiday spent with family just to be there. From the football obsession that Stefani and I share, to the picture perfect valley that you can see from every window in the classic colonial style property which is set just off state highway number 10 in New Zealand’s North Land. In the four nights we spent at Kahoe Farms, we both started to cherish every moment, in the moment. It almost does the entire experience a total disservice to list all those things which occurred during our stay there, as their triviality will to the reader, appear common place and unimpressive.

The video blogs, available on this website will give you some indication of the great landscape around the farms, but they only give you a small indication of the inner processes that were taking place which made us both feel so calm and centred. From walking up into the surrounding mountains, eating Stefano’s amazing home-made pizza and pasta, watching DVD’s in the football museum – it was all superb! I even got to play in an international 3 a-side football match, played on the pitch which hosts the very first match on New Year’s Day anywhere in the world. Incidentally, my team, made up of an Italian, American and an Englishman, beat a German team 5-4 (for a change).

I would give Kahoe Farms 11/10 – you should go and see it for yourselves if ever you get the chance!