At the beach

This morning I asked Hazel what she wanted to do on such a glorious sunny morning and she said "go to the beach!" At first I was a bit reluctant because it's about a 3/4 hour drive, but then I thought stuff it! and off we went. We headed to Muriwai Beach on the West Coast which is where we mostly seem to go. First we stopped at Maori Bay because usually it's fun to potter around the big rocks there but the tide was higher than I'd expected so we just stayed up on top and watched the surfers and gannets for a bit


(all photos and video from my phone camera unfortunately!)

and then we walked around to the viewing platform to see what the gannets were up to at their nesting site. They're at the nest-building stage it would seem.



Then we walked down the other side of the promontory to Muriwai proper and braved the big waves washing across the bottom of these stairs much to Hazel's horror once we were actually doing it. It was actually quite safe!



That effectively killed her desire to be at the beach when there was a tide - any kind of tide, low, high, inbetween, clearly a tide was not to be trusted because it makes the sea move! Aieee! , I think she was convinced we were all about to be washed away if it got any higher. Little landlubber! So we went inland for icecreams.







It truly was a beautiful morning. :)