wishing we had a geologist with us to tell us about the rocks and history!

huge tunnels!

rock tunnels

we wandered through a bunch of tunnels cut into the rocks on the far
end of the beAch...

rock arch

caves in the cliffs

if you look to the left side of the right cave, there is a tiny spec
of a person walking out of the cave. yup. that big!

the high tide line for this beach also goes right up to the mout of
the cave. amazing how much is revealed at low tide.... and how little
you can wander at high tide!

wow!

more wonders as we walked...

sighting some rocks at the far end of the beach we wanted to check
out, we kept wandering. as we got around to the back side of the giant
rock islands, they revealed that they had giant arches cut out of
them. again, evey step we took down the beach revealed new treasures! :)

tidal life

sea stars (this is the only one I really saw anywhere), green lipped
muscles and giant sea snails.

blooming "sea cherry" thingies

some sort of anemome?

rocks full of sea life...

the rocks down in the tidal area were covered in sea life... Ton of
muscles and those little "cherry" looking nuggets that bloom under
water. anyone know what they are called?? see next pic for the bloom.

wading through the tide pools...

finally pulled ourselves away from the seals, and waded through the
tide pools.... the beach is only really accessible around low tide
(which we hit quite perfectly), and the rocks are covered in sea life!
love it.

mama minding the kiddie pool

it is really hard to see in this picture... but the mama was sitting
on the rocks playing referee for the little ones playing around. where
the sand meets the rocks in the middle of the pic there is a pool of
water. at any given time 6 or so pups were swimming around, jumping in
and out, crawling all over each other. cutest thing ever! couldn't
stop watching them took a ton of little videos on my camera I will
post when I get back to SF.

playing to the audience

everyone really was trying to stay a respectful distance from the
pups, but these little guys just kept sneaking up on the rocks in
front of us, and posing for the cameras.

seal pups everywhere!

we saw a small group of people, cameras clicking away. when made it to
that section if the beach, we realized they had come upon a whole
mess of seal pups. up on the rocks, trying to keep our distance, the
little guys were super flirty and playful... were having a blast
playong with each other, checking out the people and putting in quite
a show. we really tried to stay out of the way, but there were at
least 10-12 of them in this area (with one mom keeping her eye on
them, and barking orders every now and then), and 3 or 4 kept passing
within feet of us.

wandering, constantly taking pictures!

the most amazing thing about this beach was that every time we thought
we found the perfect angle for a picture... 2 feet away there was
something even more stunning to be photographed. we both took a
zillion pics. as mentioned before, the light was a bit tricky for the
iPhone pics, but don't worry, i filled a memory card on my "real"
camera. just have to wait till I get home to post them.

I heart beaches.

stunned by the beauty, ready to explore...

beach reavealed... pictures don't begin to capture it!

we came over the dunes, and finally got a clear view of the beach, and
we were both simply stunned. rolling sand dunes lead down to the
coastline littered with GIANT rock islands. the little rock in the
water off the point is probably the size of seal rock at ocean beach
in SF. there were a good number of people on the beach 50+ maybe, but
because of the sheer size, it felt deserted.

short hike out to the coast through sheep covered hills

made it to the top... fork in the road, take a left.

made it to the top of the island, with much persistence, and managing
to resist many stops along the way. we had to return in same
direction, so always a chance to stop on way back!

end of the road, dirt in born directions. took a left turn, and
followed the signs to wharariki beach. right turn would have taken us
to the edge of farewell spit (thin landmass hooking around to form the
very edge if the island).