By the title you'll probably realise that sentence should end with the word "yet"!
We decide that although it maybe isn't the best day for a beach walk, as this is a spectacular beach we should give it a try. We know it will be low tide at about eleven.
So, following a casually enjoyed breakfast, this time in the company of one of the other guests at the B&B, a girl from Canada, living in Melbourne but working in Auckland just having a Labour Day weekend break, we head out for the bay. It's only a 20 minute drive away.
The chooks that lay the breakfast eggs.
We park up and think, we'll just put our waterproof coats on, it's a bit drizzly but looks like it won't do much. We have to walk across the beach in Whangapoua - see last blog photo.
Helpfully the sign at the car park says it's an hour and forty-five minute return walk, and that "half the fun is getting there". How they know how fast any particular person might be walking is a mystery, but from experience it is usually based on someone with longer legs and a faster gait than we have.
On reaching the far side of the beach it has started to rain, heavily, and additionally you have to wade across a river, no stepping stones - fairly shallow it may be, but you still get pretty wet.
Shoes removed, in hand, and trousers rolled up we make it over to the adjacent stretch of sand. The next 'adventure' is that you have to clamber over about 200 metres of fairly large (but very uneven) strewn boulders (it's still raining). Shoes back on by now of course.
Next there is a rather indistinct path - I'd estimate 10% path and 85% trip hazard - through some fairly dense bush. The trip hazard relates to exposed tree roots, which are very slippery. At one point there is a knotted rope strung up a short slope to assist the explorers in gaining height up a somewhat muddy slippy slope (still raining). Carrying on through the undergrowth we say hello to a girl coming the other direction, who looked familiar.
Once through the bush you emerge onto a path with the fabled beach in view.
It's not far now.
and we have to admit it is very much worth the walk (rain? Oh yes, still raining).
Time for a few photos rather than a sit and sunbathe on the beach.
Eric looks at the beach in the rain one way
And then the other
Panorama of the beach in the rain.
Find that brim of hat makes a good rain reservoir and that holding on to a Nikau Palm trunk for support results in a flood of water down inside your clothes.
The aforementioned Nikau Palms.
We head back to the car. Re-trace our steps, though everything is getting seriously slippery now. We get back to the abseiling slope/
Wheeee!
the boulders/
Eric surveys the boulder field from a large rock looking for the best way through.
sand/raging torrent (shoes off and trousers up again) -
except Eric, who somehow manages to find a few boulders to bound across.
and thence the car park.
Good view of NZ Dotterel on beach as we get back close to the car.
The Dotterel is so well camouflaged you can't even see it! It is there though, honest.
Did we mention the rain - it's still chucking it down and everything is pretty wet through. Lucky we didn't use the emergency rain ponchos we were given by the last B&B host and that we're in our backpack, as they would have become very wet.
So we return to base and start to dry everything out, as we have to pack tonight for moving on.
Whilst enjoying the remains of the picnic we had bought yesterday we chat with the Canadian girl who has also returned a little bedraggled and discover that it was her we had said "Hello" to on our trek over to New Chums. She had half recognised us just as we had her but in the rain no one was in the mood to stop to chat.
The rest of the day is spent relaxing and watching the rain ( oh yes - still raining).
The view from the balcony in the evening rain.
Good to see bank holiday weather is the same half way across the globe.