Ninety Mile Beach - which is actually 55 miles long

 The iconic Ninety Mile Beach at the very top of the North Island is a spectacular piece of coastline.  It is officially a public highway and cars and tourist buses speed along its length every day.  Not to mention motorbikes, horses and bicycles.

The trick is to drive on just the right part of the beach - drive by the sea and the sand is too wet and boggy; too close to the land and the sand is dry and soft and your wheels won't get any traction - and either way you're very stuck. So the middle strip - where it's not too wet and not too dry - is the way to go. Of course the inevitable happens with some regularity - vehicles get too close to the waves and the soft sand sucks them under and the waves pull them out and you're stuffed (in the Kiwi idiom).

The most alarming example of this is when a bus load of tourists becomes amphibious - doesn't happen often - the drivers are experienced and no-one's drowned yet!

Although the beach is on the West coast it is unusual in that it doesn't have black sand - it's as though the golden sands of the East coast have snuck around Cape Reinga to colonise this top-most western part of NZ.