It takes around an hour in the car to get to Cable Bay, one of our favourite beaches to visit.
We pass through Kaeo on the way, a typical small rural town in New Zealand. The photo below is the local police station, a compact wooden building with an even smaller building behind it. Can you see the bars on the windows - I presume this is where the naughty people get locked up to cool down!
Did you notice the poster on the side of the building - 'It's not ok to hurt our children'. Something everybody should know not to do, but it's a sad fact that NZ has a high rate of child abuse, in particular domestic violence. Drink and drugs often play a role. Sad but true.
On a sillier note, here is the 'jandal fence' (or flip flops as us Poms call them), also in Kaeo....
I love the row of trees along the top of this hill, it reminds me of a pom-pom trim around the edge of a pillow!
A common sight in New Zealand are hills with lots of horizontal lines on them. I presume it is tracks worn away by animals grazing, as the hills are quite steep....
We passed the mangroves....
And this hill which we call the sleeping giant. Can you make out his face lying down, his nose sticking up and mouth to the right? There's even a little tree or something that looks like a little eyelash!
We had to make a little detour on the way, as I had sold something online and offered to drop it off on the way. I didn't realise it was going to be quite so off road though, don't think I'd fancy this as my drive. We even had to avoid the livestock!
Yay, here at last!
Big Girl found a crab in a rock pool, and was reluctant to pick it up until she realised it was no longer alive....
So he came and joined us whilst we had our picnic lunch....
....under the shade of a Pohutukawa tree. Not that we needed shade, as it wasn't that hot, but I suppose it is winter so we can't complain about fifteen degrees!
Little Boy got a bit carried away with the shell collecting, and picking pretty ones went out of the window in exchange for collecting handfuls!
This is quite a shelly beach, but it's not until you bend down and actually look carefully (rather than just scan for big ones) that there are actually lots of pretty tiny little ones
I was quite happy just to bury my feet in the warm sand and admire the view....
I love the texture and shades of grey of the rocks ('that' film has really spoiled the phrase 'fifty shades of grey' hasn't it), and there were plenty of baby mussels clinging to the rocks....
Big Girl made a sand hill, complete with moat and flag, which I said looked more like a rather sad truffula tree (from the film The Lorax in case you are wondering what on Earth I'm on about!)....
Little Boy (with help from Daddy) made a rather large moat around his pile of sand, which started filling up, much to his delight, when the sea came in. All went well until he fell in and got wet. The water was freezing, and his poor little toes were pink with cold so we decided to finish up and have an icecream
I decided to be brave and try a different flavour so had walnut fudge on the bottom and passion fruit on the top. A strange mix I know, but yummy!
All was going well until someone stood nearby stupidly fed the remains of their cone to the seagulls, and suddenly it was like a clip from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds!
Oh well, you can't blog about a trip to the beach without the obligatory seagull shot!
Well done if you are still with me! Sorry it's a bit photo heavy, but I want to remember all these good times.
Xxxx
Gosh, this beach looks fab...and certainly looks like you had lots of fun! Thanks for popping by my blog :) xxx
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