It was a lovely sunny clear day, just before New Year, when we started out to see Opunake Beach, North Island, New Zealand.

Swimming activities:

As far as I know must beaches along the west coast of Taranaki, isn’t safe for swimming because of the strong sea currents on that side of New Zealand.  

With the seawater so cold, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people swimming there. Because of the slow slope of the beach, you could wade far way out before the surf started getting deep, making it easy to romp and play in the surf with confidence. 

(And when we returned again to the beach the following February, we saw school children had been taken to the beach by their school teaches, and were having many fun activities there.) 

Colour of beach sand!

New Zealand is so incredible, that you can’t help comparing it with your own country back home. 

In South Africa where we normally live, the beach sand is sandy-pink in colour. Not so white now anymore of cause, due to oil spills over the past few years. 

But there in New Zealand, the sand even though it’s also soft and fine, it mostly a grey-black colour, due to volcanic eruption on the west coast. So to South Africans the dull grayness may seem depressing and something you have to get used to. But if you stop and re-consider, those dark beaches and cliff-faces, it takes on a splendid dramatic appeal all of its own. 

Holiday accommodation:

Right there across from the beach is a caravan park with a children’s playground. It looks such a lovely place to take a summer holiday with your children. 

There are a couple of tiny shops too. We had an ice-cream each from the Tip Top ice-cream parlour. It was interesting to know that Tip Top is the only ice-cream firm throughout New Zealand… where as in South Africa, we have several ice-cream firms!

 

Look out points:

The beach stands within a horseshoe shaped ‘harbour’ with bluffs on both sides. 

• Our daughter in-law said there is a path you can climb up on the south bluff and look out over the beach below. She seemed very impressed with what she experience up there. 
• If you drive up the hill on the north side of the beach, you can look down on the beach below. It’s a fascinating thing to see tiny swimmers and surfers doing their thing far below you. And it the photos you will see some of New Zealand’s flora in the foreground. 

• A little further along and just around the corner, you can climb down through a deep hollow in the cliff (see the rough rocky surface we climbed down, in photos) to the seashore below. There we found a delict empty concrete shell of a building, fishing boat slipway and what is left of old wharf poles. 

• Then driving a little further north, along the coast, there is a special lookout platform tower to climb. From up there we looked up the coast and out to see we could see an oil rig.
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Such tiny, tiny, spiders!

Then our son discovered a swarm of very tiny red spiders on a metal directional dial close to the wooden platform tower. The spiders were so minuscule; you would need a microscope to see them properly. Here is a zoomed-in photo of them. Does anyone from New Zealand know the name of those spiders? 

The day’s outing was like taking an adventure into the unknown. You never knew what next you would experience. New Zealand indeed is a captivating country of diversity with its vivid beauty.