Before
leaving Marakopa, we decided to have another game of tennis, since it’d been so
much fun the previous evening. And again
we enjoyed patting the ball back & forwards, although there wasn’t as much
running about this time. Hooray for the
Marakopa Tennis Club! :)
South from
Marakopa we stopped to check out a couple of other beaches – Kiritehere &
Waikawau. Waikawau was unique for the
tunnel access through a cliff to the beach.
It felt like a gateway to another world (a deserted Middle Earth shore
perhaps). It looked like the high tides
washed right up to the base of the cliff and had eroded various caves &
step formations over the centuries.
Climbing over the rocks at the north end brought us to the base of a
waterfall which was spilling down from the flax-covered horizon above. Colonies of fluorescent green algae were
clinging to the dark rocks, some as dripping stalactites and others like weird
radioactive lava flows crawling from one rock-pool to the next. The holes and cracks in the rocks were
crawling with crabs too, some as big as a hand.
Back towards
the southern end of the beach we were surprised to see a face carved into the
soft rock just above the sand. The rock
had eroded to create a point, which the artist had incorporated into the
sculpture as a protruding chin. It was
hard to know if the face had been watching over the beach for a few years or
for hundreds? Were we even in 2008
still?? Had the tunnel transported us to
another time??
We explored
the rock pools at the south end, in search of some edible shellfish or
crustaceans. Rachel spotted a good sized
crab & went to pounce on it, but it scurried away beneath a rock just in
the nick of time. So no fresh kaimoana for us that day.
Back in the
‘real’ world, we drove on southwards until a sheltered grassy area beside the
road enticed us to stop for a picnic. There was even a little old hut beneath the
first branches of the trees, constructed almost entirely from ponga logs. Was this the home of some surprisingly ingenious
kiwi or perhaps a lost hobbit? Regardless
of such intrigues, it didn’t take long before we were getting overwhelmed by
the heat. So we continued south towards
Mokau, where we enjoyed yummy cold ice creams overlooking the Mokau River. It was a short drive from there to
Tongapurutu where we planned to stay, but we took a detour to sample some local
organic beer at the White Cliffs Brewery. It was so good we bought four packs of their
lager and pale ale, as well as a local feijoa wine, to enjoy back at Marks
bach.
Once we
arrive at Mark’s we set about gathering firewood for the outdoor bath, although
we didn’t end up using it until the following night. We did go for a mission of a walk in the
middle of the night up to the highest point on Mark’s property. Our path was lit by isolated clusters of glow-worms
and obstructed by a couple of resident goats.
We kept our ears open for any kiwi in the neighbourhood, but we did head
moreporks (NZ native owl) in the surrounding bush. Luckily they didn’t come closer with their
insistent demands for more pork – maybe they knew I was a vegetarian??
Our mission
for the following morning was to catch more fish! This time from the mouth of the Tongapurutu River.
A steep, bush-lined path took us down from a random road-head carpark to
the river bank. A posse of chilled out
cows stood guard, but we weren’t afraid and found our way through. Hooray!
Unfortunately, our brave efforts in reaching the river weren’t rewarded
with the haul of kahawai we were expecting – Rachel just got one small fish,
which went back to swim another day.
We decided
to abandon our unsuccessful fishing efforts and move on to a new
adventure. Before we could leave the
carpark area, Rachel went to introduce herself to a couple of nearby lambs –
one of which had “cute little horns”.
Unfortunately they weren’t as tame as Rachel hoped and refused to eat
the offered grass from her hand. But
they still put a big smile on Rachel’s face.
A little
further up the coast was the Whitecliffs Walkway. And there were more cute little lambs than
Rachel could count. But she still wanted
to cuddle all of them. Lucky for us the
walkway had reopened after closing for a couple of months for the lambing
season. The walk followed a farm track
along close to the coast and eventually brought us so close that the waves
seemed to be breaking on the shore almost directly beneath our feet, only 100m
below us. We decided that this would be
a perfect picnic spot – an extreme picnic!!
Luckily the cliff didn’t collapse while we enjoyed the view and our
yummy snacks. We searched the northern
coastline for signs of Mt Karioi (near Raglan), from where I had once tried to
convince Rachel that the White Cliffs of Taranaki were visible.
On our
return walk we stopped by a small stream for some rehydration – a bottle of
beer left to cool in the stream for 10 minutes before drinking :) Well-deserved too, we thought, after a few
hours walking. The local fish population
came to see what was going on in their water world; darting out from hiding
places in the sides of the stream. If
only we had a net, we could’ve had whitebait for dinner!
We did have
some kahawai left from our earlier success at Marakopa and this got turned into
a yummy fish curry four our dinner. We
had also lit a fire beneath the outdoor bathtub and it was hot by the time our
dinner was ready – so dinner in the bath :)
The location of the bathtub was unique too – beneath a canopy of manuka
and ponga tress, beside a small creek, with a colony of glow-worms on the
opposite bank and stars peeking through the leaves above.
We ate our
dinner under the glow of a candle, the now-dim fire below us, the stars above
and with the glow-worms as our neighbours.
For dessert we had marshmallows on a stick, roasted over the glowing
embers of the bath-fire. The perfect
final course for one of our most romantic dinners.
