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Equipped with deep waders, you walk out onto the reef and enjoy some up close and personal time with stingrays and other sea life (you can even pat the stingrays). Times vary with the tide. Booking required.
Solid local museum with Māori taonga and history displays. The basement houses a local surfing/ocean exhibit, including documentation of Captain Cook's first landfall in New Zealand and an entire boat wheelhouse from The Star of Canada, which sank in the harbour in 1912. There is also an historic house open to the public and a café on-site.
New Zealand's largest planting of North American trees. It has plenty of walks and gardens, and is lovely in the autumn when the leaves change.
Puhi Kai Iti
The Cook Monument was unveiled in 1906, and development of the port since means that it is no longer obvious that this marks where Cook landed in 1769 during his first voyage aboard HMS Endeavour. Cook's crew first sighted New Zealand on 7 October 1769, and landed two days later. Nine Maori died in an unfortunate encounter. Cook named the area Poverty Bay and sailed south to get supplies. The memorial was built after fundraising started in 1902 which aimed to get all New Zealand school children to donate one penny. The area was upgraded in 2019 and was renamed Puhi Kai Iti / Cook Landing National Historic Reserve.
reserve on a hill with a Cook monument and a pōhutukawa tree planted by Diana, Princess of Wales.