Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Waihi Beach Part 2… The Week That Was.

Ok this is one I missed…..so now it’s out of order…

Well what a week it has been!

I left my friends Dave and Yana on Monday as they packed up to leave and as I reported with the fishing story, managed to catch them a fish for dinner. They were stoked to have one to take home.

So on Tuesday I met up with Brenda and Roger in Dragons’ Rest at the north end of Waihi Beach and we went for a walk across the headland towards Orokawa Bay.

We didn’t end up going down to the beach as we decided that we had “done enough for a mello puff”. It was a nice walk but pretty uphill and down dale. Some wonderful views.

On Wednesday we moved south and ended up at Anzac Bay where we launched the kayaks and went fishing in the tidal current.

The photos above were taken by my sister. Thanks Brenda! Neat to have some of me doing things.

Roger managed to catch a kawhai that he smoked for lunch with a lovely chilli marinade. It was simple delicious. He also christened his new smoker.

It was amazing to be in the current that sweeps around the point at the western end of Anzac Bay. The amount of water moving through there is huge and it creates some fascinating whirlpool, eddies and rips. Sometime the kayak is twirling like a dances and then gets caught in the rippling effect where the water is chattering away in tiny little wavelets as the wind and currents meet. The sound of the water was scary to begin with.

Thursday we wandered up the track and made our way down to the same point but on land this time and on first cast Roger caught a nice kawhai but lost him just as he got it onto the rocks. He made up for it shortly there after with a very nice kawhai. I caught one soon after but was much smaller.

You can see in the pics what the water looked like.

My fish went into the freezer for bait and Roger smoked the other on Friday for lunch.

Friday we went walking again up the hill towards Shelly Beach and had a great wander up to the top of the hill. The view was amazing.

Top of hill panorama

Had an interesting episode with the Rescue helicopter the following morning. It came in to land just across the earthworks from where we were parked.

DSCF0209DSCF0212

They were setting up for a shoot with the Coastguard boat that appeared shortly thereafter…

DSCF0215DSCF0216

Not sure what they were shooting but it was obviously well coordinated with the everything moving in sync.

So from there we moved in towards Tauranga for my meeting with Bill from Bill’s Bus Stop, who is going to sort out my electrics.

I am moving the existing solar panel, adding a new one with a new solar controller, putting in a 240v battery charger and sorting out the spaghetti in the battery compartment.

So on the way we called into Kauri Point with the intention of possibly staying the night, but it was not suitable but it was a nice spot. There is a carpark quite a distance from the water where you can overnight but its not very level and quite shaded with trees. We stopped for a wander around, going down to the whaaaaarf. No not a typo.

DSCF0217DSCF0220

It goes out for a very, very long way. There were heaps of terns and sea gulls on the railing.

DSCF0224

We also wandered across into the actual township of Kauri Point. Quite a largish settlement.

DSCF0342

The pic above is of the reserve at Kauri Point, a huge area but a long way up from the water. I came up the stairs to the reserve and it was 5 mins of stairs all the way!

From there we moved backwards to Tuapiro Reserve, which is an awesome place. Lovely huge park

DSCF0345

and a great walk up the peninsular to the end opposite Tanners Point. Went for a lovely walk.

The one great thing about the Eastern Bay of Plenty Council is that they tell you exactly where you can park, for how long and how many can stay there. The signs have a map with either the allocated area in red or starred to show where to park.

Unfortunately at the domain, the rules were three vehicles max, for three nights only, and as there were already three vehicles there we decided to move on and not break the rules.

There is more to come…..

No comments:

Post a Comment