Hahei Beach

( In case you were wondering: The Coromandel Peninsula was named for HMS Coromandel, a ship of the British Royal Navy, which stopped at Coromandel Harbour in 1820 to purchase kauri spars and was itself named for India's Coromandel Coast.)

Right next to Cathedral Cove is a beach named Hahei.  It is a a long beach and pretty wide. There were lots of families playing that day.  They were jumping the waves or playing in the sand.  We saw four young girls, maybe 11 or 12 that were being buried by their fathers and then they were sculpted into mermaids.  I did not think I should take a picture since they were all there.  Guess I could have asked but didn't think of it.

There must be some weird currents or something.  Notice how the waves have carved the sand. And notice how many people there are on the sand.

We walked the entire length to one end and then returned to the other and back.  This is just a neat formation we passed as we were walking.  Just to the side of this there were kids swinging on a rope swing.  

Here he is down by the rocks again. On the other side in Cathedral Cove.  Just to give you a lay of the land so to speak. You can see the size of the rocks when you see how small he looks!

And the next photo is way at the other end of the beach.  It was not very busy because the waves were smaller, probably protected by the rocks or currents.  

One of my grandkids asked if I can seen a jelly fish. Well I got to see them at Hahei.  They were all over the place.  Someone told me that they were small ones.  There are two photos below.  One is with the jelly fish on the sand and the other one I am holding.  

You have to look hard to see it.  This was about the size of a golf ball.  Some were smaller and some larger but not any bigger than a small grapefruit.  I then decided that I wanted to know what it felt like so I picked it up.  It looked like it would be pliable but it was not.  It was not hard like a rock but I don't think I could bend it.  It was cool to the touch and smooth.  (Yes, I know what it looks like. I have seem enough shows on TV to not know.)

The beach does not have a dock so people bring their little boats on small carriers that they can pull themselves or they use these trackers.  There were three of them sitting right next to each other.  

Most of the trees in the background are the ones that get the red flowers on them at Christmas time. It would have been a pretty sight!

Cathedral Cove

When we made plans to go to the Coromandel there was one place we wanted to go:  Cathedral Cove.  It is a cool place in that it has been protected from the world.  There is no road that leads to it.  As far as we know (we did not see if you can get a boat to take you in but it is a possibility) the only way in is to walk.  There is a trail that you have to walk.  At times it is pretty strenous and hard. We took some rest stops along the way.  That last part is about 5 minutes of very steep hillside you have to go down and then ends with about 40 steps.  It is not for the faint hearted although we saw kids about 4 or 5 going down and in all different kinds of footwear from flip flops to clogs to hiking boots to tennies. We were glad we had on proper shoes! 

In the movie, Prince Caspian (Narnia) when the four kids first come to Narnia they come out of the underground station and onto the beach at Cathedral Cove and this is the first thing you see.  This is my photo and not one that I took from some Narnia website.

The tide was coming in so it was a bit tricky to get to that beach...in fact I didn't.  Dad did.  

This was Dad coming back after he had been over there.  If you look closely you can see the water line on his shorts.  Almost got his phones!  This is what it looked like right before and immediately after he went through.  Lucky!

This was a very busy beach and there were lots of people on it but there was still room to walk around. There were lots of people swimming in the bay as well and some boats. There was a ledge that people would climb on and then jump off.  If you look carefully at the photo here you will see that the one boy is doing a back flip off of the ledge.  I should have asked him if he wanted me to send him a copy but I did not think of it while I was there. 

Most of the people here were not natives of NZ.  They are by no means sun worshippers and these people were all too tanned and burned to be Kiwis.  

Just a few more pictures.  This is at the other end of the beach from the cathedral.  It was pretty neat to watch the waves coming in and out here.  

This almost looks like a double exposure but it is just one rock formation in from of another. This gives you just a bit of what was going on in the water.  There were several kayaks that came over from the other next door beach and then they went back.  Some bigger boats as well.  

This picture below is either the end of the trail if you are arriving or the beginning if you are leaving the beach.  If you look closely you will see that the roots or the big branches of the big tree have been cut to make room for the staircase.  And yet it lives on.  

This is a beach and area that we would love to visit again.  We learned some things that we will do the next time we come.  What a great day it was.  

Don't jump!

While we were driving the Coromandel Peninsula we stopped at this one beach in Whangapoua.  It was a quiet little town.  There was a reserve by the beach which meant no picking up anything.  No leaves, grass, sticks or shells.  Quoting from the travel guide:  "The harbour once served as a timber port but today it mainly serves boaties heading out to fish or go waterskiing.  The estuary is shallow and safe for swimming and there is a walking track around the point at the northern end of the beach through a beautiful grove of nikau palms to New Chums beach ."

So we took a nice long walk.  The tide was going out so there was a big span of sand.  There were some people but not hundreds by any means.  Some were having lunch while others were just sitting. There were many that were in the watch jumping the waves as they came in.

We walked towards a large pile of rocks.  For some reason Michael is enthralled with rocks.  He wants to hike over them, sit on them or play. At times I am ok but not always.

This is the beach looking back towards where we came from.  

Here is Dad trying to figure out what he is going to do now.  Do I go to the left, to the right, over, or under?

You can see him way out on the rocks after he had climber through all those between me and the rock he is standing on.  

Here is a close up on him. He had just enough of a forward leaning to make me want to shout: DON'T JUMP!!  Of coursre it never entereed his mind.  He just thought it was so cool there.  

Coromandel Peninsula

This last weekend we took a short trip. After our meetings on Sunday we drove to Thames.  It was an hour and a half.  We had little room there.  Nothing like the rooms we had when we were at the other places and I was feeling a bit sad that I had maybe not been as wise as I thought I had been.  It was alomost like a B and B but not.  They were regular hotel rooms but a couple ran it, check in time was when  you got there and they asked if you wanted full fat milk or trim for your tea and coffee and then poured some into a little pitcher that they took with you and put in your fridge when they walked you to your room. If you wanted to order breakfast they would fix it and bring it to you.  Only 12 rooms.

We had taken our dinner with us so we sat at the table and had a nice chicken dinner.  We had the door to our private patio open and in walked a big cat.  I had to laugh.  I immediately thought of the TV ad where the lady goes to the patio door and calls her kitty in for the night and in walks a racoon.  We just opened the main door and he walked out.  Funny.

The next morning we got up and after working for a coupe of hours we set off.  We had a suggested route that we were going to take.

Thames was a gold mining town that eventually turned into a logging town.  It was named by Captain Cook who thought it looked like the Thames in England.  There is a museum there where you can see the scales they used to weigh the gold and stuff.  There is also a mine you can go into but we passed.

We then conitnued north.  The road was a little two lane, usually, that wove its way along the coast.  At times there were electrical wires along the shoreline carrying power to the north and south.  The road was very narrow at times and sometimes it was only one lane.  They have these narrow bridges that are only one lane.  Usually the left side going north has the right of way so those coming south wait their turn.  On a long stretch of bridge there will be a swing out for one car to wait in the middle of the bridge.  There were lots of those.  The drive to the little town Coromandel goes around the beach and then across just a bit of a stretch of land.  Coromandel itself is a tourist town and a jumping off to other places.  That is where you would get the private boat or maybe a fishing cruise for the day.  Not much there.  We were glad that we did not take the ferry from Auckland over with Nate as we would have just been stuck there.

Maybe a bit more...

The night after that we went for another walk.  We checked tides and knew that we were hitting low tide which was good.  This time we walked north on takapuna beach.  Takapuna is really the best beach in this area and people really like it.  We walked north to the boat dock and then onward.  There are lots of rocks along the way and little sand.  They have been walked so much there is a pathway in the lava.  It was fun to see all the things.

Along this stretch of beach the houses come right down to the rocks.  There are walls and gates etc but there has never been large beaches etc.  You can see how close the homes are to the edge here.

Someone built a "chair" or bench along the trail for people to sit in.  Probably it was for them to come out and sit in but since no one was there we decided to take a photo!

In one yard we saw that they had their own incline.  Reminded me of the inclines in Pittsburgh.  What a funny thing I thought.

A part of the trail had once been a walkway along the top of a rock wall but it was closed. You had to walk just behind it on what was referred to as "private property" but there was a good path so I figured this particular part of the trail had been closed for a long time.

We conitnued on until we got to caster bay. That is about four little bays up.  When we got there we found that there is an inlet that was probably 20 feet wide and many feet deep. We thought that maybe at some time it would be shallow enough to walk through but then we saw a sign that said the water was not clean and do not swim or walk in it.  And we decided that it probably would not get much smaller.  It was almost low tide and as it was none of the boats in the marina would have been able to get out.  You had to walk all the way around the marina and on streets to get to the other side so we decided to save that walk for another day.  We then came back on the streets.  It was again a fun experience to see landmarks and discover interesting things.  

This was one of the most interesting things we saw.  It is a disk that rotates your car because it was too small of a driveway to turn around in and if you backed out it was onto a busy street.  Clever huh?  I had heard about these in bus stations and train stations but had never seen one in a private home.

We also saw this "castle" which is supposed to have been built in England and then dismantled and reconstructed here.  Not very big as you can see but a fun thing.

So...we are walking back south to our car and the beach is on our left, maybe four houses from the street to the water.  Then to our right is Lake Papuke.  I knew it was close but didn't know it was this close.  This is taken at the narrowest distance between the bay and the lake.  Not very far.  

Another nice walk...about 9 km.

And more walking

The next day we took another walk and this time we started at Takapuna beach and went south.  We walked that entire beach which is pretty long and then to leonard beach.  It was very rocks and not just little rocks but huge bolders!  And they are not lava either.  We had to billy goat over them and for awhile there I was thinkng we had been very unwie to start such a project.  But we finally made it over them and found we were on the north end of narrow neck beach so we walked it to the south end where we had stopped the previous day.  It was a fun walk.  We saw lots of interesting things.

People were walking their dogs on the beach (yes, they had plastic bags for the poop) and the dogs seemed happier to see each other than the people walking them were to see each other.  There were old couples walking together, single people running and then families.  We saw dads on the rocks teaching their kids how to fish.

When we finished our walk we realized that low tide was over (and we did not want to billy goat it back) so we walked back along the streets.  We found some sneaky ways to get back from the doctor's place that would keep us off of the main road longer which was good.  We found landmarks that people were always talking about but that we had no clue about.  What a productive night it was.

We drove it after we got back to the car and think it was about 11- 12 km.  Not a bad nights stroll!

They walked, and walked, and walked and....

Sorry for the delay in posting but there was a problem with it and I finally sent a message to google and they seemed to have fixed whatever the issue was.  Hopefully.

In looking at maps and suggested outings we have found that there is a way to walk the entire east coast of the island, at least where there are beaches. So we started on afternoon and went first to Devanport. That is where the wharf is on this side of the harbour.  We walked all those beaches and visited the little town there.  Certainly a tourist city.  The cruise ships come in and they ferry the passengers to Devonport for the day. Lots of places to eat as well as places to spend money.  After we were there we went to cheltenham beach. This is the place where we had lunch with the office Christmas party and where the tide was so far out.  It was again so far out and easy to walk.  We tried at the beginning to keep our feet dry but that soon went by the wayside.

We walked together for awhile but then I was taking too long so my companion headed off by himself. I wondered and looked at shells and the sand and all those things that were there to see and then I saw it.  A sand dollar!  I was so excited but when I picked it up I had the feeling that it was still alive.  So I put it back but soon I was seeing more.  I started to pick them up and realized that if there was a hole on the bottom they were dead.  I found 14!  There were more but I decided not to be greedy.  I took them home and put them in a bucket of water since we were going to FHE with the seniors.

They sat in the water until the next evening when I had time to take care of them.  I washed them and kind of scrubbed them with a tooth brush and then put them in a solution of water and bleach and left them overnight.  And this is what they look like now.

The little one is a bit bigger than a golf ball and the biggest one is about the size of a very large navel orange.  I am so excied that I found these.  In all the reading I have done and in all of the materials everyone has left there is nothing that says these shells would be found on cheltenham beach! Bonus!

We continued our walk and ended up on narrow neck beach which is the beach north on cheltenham.  It was fun to realize that is where we were.  There are big lava formations that separate the beaches usually but they were easy to walk over etc.  It was a very nice afternoon.

A Few Observatons . . .

We have been in New Zealand now for just over seven months.  At times it seems like we are still new to the land but other times we are so comfortable that it seems like we have been here much longer but it was fun to experience the Christmas season and all the festivities here for the first time.  It is really like nothing we have ever seen or experienced before.  I mentioned in a family letter that is was almost hard to even know that it was Christmas given the lack of trappings all about.  From some of our previous adventures we were not surprised that it was warm and summer but we were surprised by the lack of participation in decorating and the visual evidences of it.

One difference that I observed and was so grateful for was there was no fear or concern or discomfort at wishing someone a merry Christmas and never was someone saying have a happy holiday.  The concert at Town Hall was certainly a celebration of the birth of the Savior and it was evidenced in the music that was performed and the words that were spoken.  The church across the street from us was very busy with cars going in and out bringing people for Mass on both Christmas eve and the actual day as well.

As the new year has begun it is weird that so many people are still not back to work and that not all the shops and restaurants are open.  Since school is still our people take the chance to go on a holiday and to leave town.  We were concerned that during the vacation season that our little Takapuna would be full of visitors and that it would be so busy but it is quite the contrary.  We were at the beach last Saturday for a few minutes, really just walking about and observing people.  It was busy and people were enjoying the day.  It was a bit funny to see all these dark Tongans and Samoans slathering sun screen on themselves and their kids.  They believe that the best sun tan is one that leaves no marks or evidence on your body! The water was busy with kayaks, long boards, jet skis, swimmers, fishing boats and walkers.  They were there by themselves or as large families with everything in between.  They were having picnics that they brought or were eating just fruit or a sandwich from a vendor or a pizza.

But then we were there yesterday afternoon just for a short walk and the area was almost empty of people.  There was noting that would indicate that people were there vacationing.  So maybe our little part of the world will just stay like we like it.  Kamryn wanted to know if we walked on the sea shells --we certainly do.  People here are not very impressed with a nice shell.

I suppose the other thing I have observed is that they are really concerned and participate with new goals and resolutions.  There were so many testimonies in church on Sunday about wanting to be better and do better and have a greater love and knowledge of the Savior.  It was nice.  They are a people that like to be better than they were.  They love their country and will strive to make it better and to improve it.  Recycling is not even questioned.  Nice yards are a given. Polite children are the norm.  And polite cashiers are expected.  When you check out they ask how you are and they really expect an answer. If you just say fine that is not enough.  They will ask if your work went well, if you have plans for the evening, what you are going to bake with the flour you are buying.  We have met some lovely people at the market.  One is a young man, 23, who is from India.  He is going back in March to visit his family and to meet the girl they have picked to be his bride.  Another is a lady from Iran.  She loves her country but knows that it is now ruined and she will never go back.  It is too late for us to visit and find it nice.

Just a few observations of our time here.  Hope you enjoyed the ramblings!

Gannets Revisited!

The last time I reported on the gannets at Muirwai they were just beginning their courting and had not even thought of laying an egg.  I was there about two weeks ago with Nate and it is certainly a different picture today.  Most of the eggs have hatched and the babies are beginning to appear.  I am amazed at how big the babies are and that they still had only fuzz like a baby chick and no feathers at all!

You can see a couple of they just sitting or laying on the ground.  They are all white with just a black beak.  They look rather lazy to me.

Right in the middle of the picture below you can see one of the babies standing up.  It is as big as its parent although it just has fuzz. A smaller one is to the left just sitting there.

Couple of more here with their moms. (I assume...could be a dad!)

And just one more to look at.  My assumption is that those that are still sitting are on eggs and that they should be hatching soon.  It takes 44 days for them to hatch out.  They should all be hatched soon thought because those babes need to be ready to fly by the beginning on March!

I decided to do  bit more research about these birds, especially since we saw some of them when we were at Bay of Islands and they were diving into the water and coming out with fish. So I checked them out.  If it doesn't change when I post it then you can actually click on the blue words and they will give you a link to learn more.  I thought it was pretty interesting what there is to know about them.

It was a fun day to see them there.

(I have gone back and edited this because the part that I copied and pasted did not work and it was just white lines etc so you can google it if you want to know more!)

The setting sun

Lake Taupo is about 40 km south of Lake Rotorua and is much bigger.  It is a crater lake as are most of the lakes in New Zealand.  Our flat looked out over the lake and we were blessed to see a spectacular sunset.  Nate and I wanted down to the shore to get the best pictures we could.

I think it is pretty lovely if I do say so myself!

The luge

Once you got to the top of the mountain then you had the opportuntiy to ride the lufe.  In Queenstown you could take the lufe down or the gondola.  In Taupo you could take the luge down but it only went part of the way so then you would ride the ski life up and then take the gondola back down so that is what Nate wanted to do.  

This is the view of Lake Rotorua and the island.  The switchbacks are the luge track. 

Here is Nate on his way down.  He was going pretty slow here but evidently there is a place where he was airborne!  

Here he is just before getting off of the ski lift.  Notice that he is bringing up two of the luge cars with him.  It is so clever how they work.  

He was happy with just the one run.  We thought he looked very fetching in his helmet!

Jelly Bellies

When we were in Rotorua we rode a Gondola to the top of the mountain there.  It was so much easier than the one in Queenstown.  They had all sorts of things to do.  The luge was one.  They had a swing. Shops where you could spend your money.  A theater for a weird movie.  And a restaurant.

One of the shops was a jelly bellystore.  Everything in the store was a jelly belly.  They had art work made from the beans.  A few photos to show their talent.

There are big signs that say the beans are not to be eaten!

Can you imagine this being your job?!?

Certainly one of the masters makes it even more impressive!