Kerikeri is an attractive town of around 8,000 people in Northland. It is both scenic and historic. The town centre is away from the main highway and well maintained with several restaurants and cafes. The palm trees are also an unusual feature, and there is a beautiful forest walk with two waterfalls, Rainbow Falls and Wharepoke Falls on the Kerkeri River Walk. The edge of the town is dominated by horticultural farms, with the odd shop and cafe and two other shorter tracks to waterfalls, Charlies Rock and Te Wairere.
The town's historical features, such as the Kororipo pā, the Stone Store, and the Mission House, are around Kerikeri Basin, where the Kerikeri River flows into the Kerikeri Inlet. This is a 6 to 13-minute drive from the town centre, depending on which side of the basin you want to park on.
The town is also an excellent jumping-off point for exploring the wider region. Puketi Forest to the west, the beaches of the Pacific Coast to the north/northwest and the Bay of Islands to the southeast are all less than a 30-minute drive.
An oddball feature of Kerikeri as a tourist town is its informal moniker, "It's So Nice They Named It Twice". An anonymous backpacker wrote it in the Visitors' Book at the Kerikeri Youth Hostel in the 1980s. The Kerikeri Chronicle newspaper then published it, and the rest is history!
Kerikeri is about a 3-hour and 20-minute drive from Auckland (240 km) and 80 km north of Whangārei, the only city in Northland. Most of the drive north is on State Highway 1, with a short section on State Highway 10.
