Some­thing exists within our human psyche which draws us into explor­ing our own and nat­ural bound­ar­ies. Thrill-seeking sat­is­fies even the hard­est on men, though nat­ural bound­ar­ies have there draw too. Though the South­ern Alps are deservedly graced with glory it is the beau­ti­ful coast­line which dom­in­ates these islands. Stand­ing at the edge of the land  look­ing over the water evoked feel­ings of change and new begin­nings for us both.

Mile upon mile of end­less beaches where the sun­light washes over the sand and reflects the sky like a mir­ror. Dom­in­at­ing cliffs guard over idyllic coves from the pound­ing waves and rocky out­crops that are home to seals, pen­guins and sea-birds.

The sea­scape relent­lessly demon­strates its prowess as sev­eral rows of waves roll towards the shore at any time. Waves pound the seem­ingly impen­et­rable rock like a magical sculptor with only fine grains of golden sand left behind. Home to all creatures great and small, the wealth of wild­life is a dream. Seals and seal-lions bask in the sun­light after a few days fish­ing. Yellow-Eyed Pen­guins surf and dive through the waves at sun­rise and sun­set. Even whales are drawn here to feed in the extens­ive lar­der at Kaikoura.

The Maori people, ori­gin­ally from Poly­ne­sia, arrived in New Zea­l­and by waka (canoe) and named it ‘Aotearoa’ loosely trans­lated to ‘The land of the long white cloud’. Weather sys­tems play an import­ant role in shap­ing these islands. Heavy rain clouds roll in over the Tas­man Sea and empty down the spine of the South­ern Alps before dis­pers­ing to allow for glor­i­ous sun­shine on the East­ern Plat­eau. Each coast­line is poun­ded by a dif­fer­ent sea with the Tas­man Sea on the west­ern side and South Pacific Ocean on the east­ern side. These two seas meet at Cape Reinga in the North and Stew­art Island in the South where waves come head to head and crash over on another.

There are many hid­den gems to offer around both islands and here are some of our highlights.

Beaches and Coves

The end­less reflec­tions of Ninety Mile Beach

Many beaches dot New Zealand’s coast­line draw­ing loc­als and tour­ists alike.

Ninety Mile Beach (in fact only 55 miles long) is loc­ated on the west coast of North Island’s North­land region and is the most fam­ous and impress­ive beach in NZ. Sev­eral stor­ies abound as to why it was so called with the most pop­u­lar one claim­ing that mis­sion­ar­ies, cap­able of trav­el­ling 30 miles a day, took three days to tra­verse the beach and so claimed it to be 90 miles long without tak­ing into account the slower pace of their horse on the sand.

This does not in any way detract from this impress­ive place where sea meets land and sky meets earth cre­at­ing a won­drous reflec­tion. It is hard not to be inspired here. The nat­ural reflec­tions inspir­ing internal reflec­tions within ourselves. As we made imprints into the sand we passed a sleep­ing seal-lion on the sand. Blink­ing slowly, with only inquiry but no con­cern, he patiently waited for us to amble on. Drive along the beach is pop­u­lar, but for us this was impossible in our ‘Mam­moth’ camper­van. Upon reflec­tion I think it would have sep­ar­ated us from the emo­tional influ­ence this place has.

No trip to NZ is com­plete without tak­ing a shovel down to Hot Water Beach in the Coro­man­del. Due to a won­der­ful freak of nature extremely hot-water bubbles up through the sand enabling you to indulge in a self-dug spa-pool on the beach. Tide per­mit­ting that is! We were there dur­ing Spring tides which was a chal­lenge. Man power is noth­ing against the power of the sea. Hur­riedly dig­ging at the beach and pill­ing the sand to cre­ate a pool only to see it washed clean away was a hum­bling exper­i­ence. Time and time again people per­severed with many work­ing in teams to help one another, but even­tu­ally they all ended up fall­ing the the same fate. Finally, the women were sat in bot­tom sized hot puddles with the men hold­ing spades look­ing bemused at their defeat. A very funny exper­i­ence though I’d go back again in more con­du­cive con­di­tions as the reward is well worth the effort. Espe­cially for those couples where the men did all the digging!

 

Hot Water Beach as James works to defeat the power of the waves

Waihi Beach where you can surf or sit pool side

Waihi in the Bay of Plenty is another glor­i­ous long golden beach with the per­fect break for the surfer within. For those not ready to take the plunge into the winter waters the Top 10 Hol­i­day Park here offers a sur­pris­ing soph­ist­ic­a­tion with a won­der­ful long pool, kids pool and water slide, an out­door spa and para­sol covered deckchairs.

 

Look­ing through Cathed­ral Cove

By far the most impress­ive rock form­a­tion we found was in the Coro­man­del Peninsula’s, where ‘Kiwi’s go for their hol­i­days. Hahei is a lovely coastal town from where you can enjoy a short bush walk to the secluded loc­a­tion of Cathed­ral Cove, so called after the cav­ernous cathedral-like arch worn out of rock proudly stand­ing there. At low tide the cove becomes a grand entrance to the next beach which is beau­ti­fully framed by the rock arch. With sand squeezed between our toes we paddles in the waves and took a romantic moment to gaze upon this beau­ti­ful nat­ural won­der and each other as we remembered the vows we made exactly four years ago. Happy wed­ding anniversary, darling.

Coast­line

The east coast of North Island gets more than its fair share of sun­shine and is a good place to spend time when the rain sets in at Tongariro National Park. From the peak of Te Mata the coast­line dis­plays stun­ning. ridges, plat­eaus and dis­tant moun­tains. Within this undu­lat­ing region the earth bares much fruit enabling local vine­yards to pro­duce award win­ning wines and local bees to pro­duce sweet manuka honey. This region is one of the world’s best examples of Art Deco archi­tec­ture after a seis­mic event raised Napier and some of the sur­round­ing towns to the ground in the 1920s.

 

North Island’s East coast

 

Cherry blos­som in bloom pol­lin­ated by honey bees to make Arataki honey

Apart from the end­less beaches that sur­round the islands coast­line there is also the unfor­get­table land­scape of the Marl­bor­ough Sounds and the Fiords. Where moun­tains touch the ocean. These fas­cin­at­ing places are a priv­ilege and a pleas­ure to visit and allow you to get safely out onto the water at look back at New Zea­l­and. We thor­oughly enjoyed the won­der­ful tramp­ing, wild­life, kayak­ing and fish­ing in the Marl­bor­ough Sounds dur­ing our two vis­its here. The people were lovely and very wel­com­ing with a com­pat­ible sense of humour. The Fiords were awe-inspiring and reminded you of the nat­ural power at work here. The shear scale and unin­hab­it­able nature of this place to humans gave it a par­tic­u­larly spe­cial qual­ity and reminded you that this place was here before us and would be here still when we are long gone.

Rock form­a­tions

The Cat­lins on the south east coast of South Island revealed to us the strangest sight I have seen on a beach. The Mouer­aki Boulders are not yet under­stood, but sci­ence thinks they were cre­ated under­neath the sea and since the seabed has been exposed these large round boulders are slowly being exposed from within the cliff and remain on the beach. Some have been ‘cracked’ open and expose a thick wall with a hol­low centre. Bizarre.

Mouer­aki Boulders

The Pet­ri­fied Forest

Still within the Cat­lins area, Curio Bay reveals the pet­ri­fied remains of an 180 mil­lion year old indi­gen­ous forest. These fossils may have been linked to with the coast of South Amer­ica form­ing Gond­wana­land. Today you can still see many of the stumps and trunks of these trees lying on the sand at low tide. Magical.

Experts are still unclear about the exact form­a­tion of the Pan­cake Rocks and why they should have formed in lay­ers. They tower high out of the ocean like a mix­ture of a pile of jig­saw pieces and a vast game of Jenga. Over time the sea has found a way through the rock cre­at­ing blowholes with impress­ive dis­plays of might. It is worth the wait to spend time at each blowhole to see the really big waves come under the rock and explode through the open­ing to the sky.

Punakaki Pan­cake Rocks

Wild­life

Sur­round­ing the coast­line is a pleth­ora of oppor­tun­it­ies to see wild­life both on land and in the ocean. South Island is the ideal place to go to exper­i­ence this. Whales of all vari­et­ies breach around Kaikoura, attrac­ted by the vast lar­der brought here by an under­wa­ter ridge to the south. The best way to see these beasts of the ocean is from the air by chop­per. The sperm whale we saw was sleep­ing at the sur­face, iden­ti­fied by the longer peri­ods between breaths. At 100ft above the clear water we could see the eye, long mouth and vast tail of this incred­ible creature from the deep.

 

James happy to be in a chop­per again to view a sperm whale from the coast of Kaikoura

The Otago Peninsula’s rugged shores claim an impress­ive share of NZ’s wild­life for its size. The vast Royal Albatross roams the skies over pro­tec­ted craggy cliffs on only the win­di­est of days. Seals lol­lop over the rocks at the oceans edge. Pen­guins surf and dive the seas only to waddle ashore for rest and breed­ing. Ara­bella was in here ele­ment, but this is not to say that the won­der if this place passed us by. Equip with bin­ocu­lars and vast zoom lenses we got up close and per­sonal with as many birds and mam­mals as was pos­sible here. You can pay to see the pen­guins, but for us it was always the ulti­mate exper­i­ence to see these creatures nat­ur­ally going about their lives.

 

Wild­life on the Otago Peninsula

Sadly New Zealand’s national bird, the illus­ive Kiwi, is not easy to find in the wild as they are nat­ur­ally both shy and noc­turnal. So we vis­ited them at Kiwi Zoo in Queen­stown where they work hard to pro­tect these flight­less birds from extinc­tion by fer­rets, weasels and other such creatures. About the size of a chicken, they pair for life and only pro­duce one egg each year and are said to share DNA with the emu and the ostrich.

Well this con­cludes our high­lights though there is so much more to see, so get going!

Cesca

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