New Year's Day on the Beach

Ever since our fabulous trip to Wanganui for Christmas, J and I have been enjoying relaxing around home. We have done some hiking, had a neighbour over for tea, and Skyped with friends/family, but otherwise, it's just been the two of us relaxing. We're reading, playing games, watching some cool shows, laying in the sun, practicing the guitar, crocheting, and generally enjoying ourselves.

On January 1st, we decided to start the new year by checking out Makara Beach, which is (we think) the closest beach to our new flat. It was the first day in over a week that it wasn't brilliantly sunny, but the overcast day was still nice and warm, so we were happy with that. J likes cloudy days better, anyway.

This is Makara Beach. It is about 15 or 20 minutes from our flat, on the west coast of the peninsula(ish) that Wellington is on. If you drive in almost any direction from Wellington, you hit water fairly quickly, as it is a skinny bit of land with a million bays and inlets and the one huge harbour.

I thought Makara Beach looked fairly pretty, but J was deeply unimpressed because he didn't think it looked very clean, and once I got a whiff of the rather strong dead fishy smell, I had to agree that it wasn't as pleasant as many NZ beaches. There was also some rubbish and dog poop, neither of which I expect to see on NZ beaches, so that was disappointing.

Nonetheless, it felt good to get my toes in the sand and feel the waves lapping around my feet.

We decided to walk along the curve of the beach towards this tall rock, which we saw some people climbing on, with rock climbing gear and everything.

The farther we got away from the parking lot/entrance, the nicer this beach was. The dead fish smell went away (perhaps it was caused by too many people fishing at once), and there were interesting things to see.

The tall rock was very cool, in among lots of interesting rock formations. We thought about climbing it, but decided that the jagged volcanic rocks below necessitated the ropes and climbing gear that the other people used.

J discovered that this was a tide pool area, with all the interesting marine life that entails.

The tide seemed to be all the way out, and the tide pools were low, but we could see lots of different things living in them.

There were interesting types of barnacles and snails with all colours, shapes and sizes of shells. There were also these shiny, black creatures that were delightfully squishy. Unlike the barnacles and snails, we only saw them quite near the low water, so they must be less tolerant of long stretches out of the water.

We discovered that there were paths leading up the coastline, and surmised that if ventured farther, that we would find more pristine stretches of beach, which would be great. However, we weren't prepared for that and J was only wearing water shoes, so we decided to postpone exploration for another day. I have heard good things about Makara Beach, and did enjoy it, so I'm optimistic for many fun adventures there in the future.