West (Black sand) Coast of North Island

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Well after tasting NZ wine we both decided to biff the idea of the East coast and head out West. First stop the tunnel beach at Waikawau. A tidal beach only accesible at low tide, the tunnel was originally built by two brothers to drive sheep through to get them by boat to market (Lisa felt strangely at home here). This beach was a mixture of beauty and excitement as the waves of the Tasman sea were very large and undoubtedly this is one of the best surfing spots in NZ if you dare! Also a really strange feature was the black sand, not sure what this is caused by but we got a deposit for further analysis. One local past time seems to be as the tide comes in they jump on quads and scramblers to speed down the beach, looks like fun!

From here we drove further south to Tongaporutu or as the sign says the three sisters. The thing about sisters is they can sometimes be unreliable and as soon as they put the sign up one fell over, so it should now be called two sisters and a little stump but they cant afford new signage, hey whos counting! Apparently there were four sisters at the beginning of the century but they seem to have lost one completely, there is also an elephants feet but we missed those. For all those who thing I have just taken LSD look at the photos and you see what I mean.

These are coastal stacks that used to be arches but over time they have eroded/collapsed into phenomonal rock formations on what is a dramatic coastline. This beach could only be reached at low tide and we had to wade through sea caves knee deep in water to get here, which is why we were miffed to miss the elephants feet!

I guess at some point there will be no sisters and presumably the elephant will have left as well, dont know what they will put on the sign then!

Unfortuanetly we did no thave the time to do the entire West coast (the infamous surfers road) but I did manage to squeeze in a brewery at Urenui where I had a lovely couple of pilsners and Lisa got into strawberry ale.

We popped off to Mt. Egmont en route to make steak sandwiches, found a pub called the Rutland Arms in Wanganui which describes itself as a little piece of England in New Zealand, no wonder it was full of shell suits and ASBO's (not really but they did chill their beer, sacrilige...). Camped next to a river that almost flooded us out and got eaten by Mozzies (although my $1 fly swatter was in full effect, like a coiled viper) and arrived in Wellington for New Year.

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