Tag: beach

The coastal city of Tauranga has many popular sandy beaches. Pilot Bay is one of the calmer, more shelter beach opposite Mount Maugnanui main beach. Perfect for families and swimmers. In the background on the right is the hundreds of boats at the various marinas around the Tauranga Harbour. This was taken from the Pilot Quay Parking lots at the north west end of the beach. Looking south east along The Mall. Hopefully next time I’m in the area I’ll have more time to get in the water.

Driving along the Chaslands Highway we came over a hill to see this coastal landscape. This is the view from Florence Hill Lookout. From here to the Tautuku Peninsula it’s about 2 kilometres. It’s the only place left on the east coast of the South Island where native forest fully covers a catchment from hill-tops to sea. The ancient forest with trees over 1,000 years old and grows right down to the seashore.

A Bach (pronounced ‘batch’) is a small, modest holiday home here in New Zealand. This photograph was taken in the far south where they’re sometimes called a crib. The bay is on the southern coast of the South Island about a two hour drive from Dunedin. This bach seemed to be empty when we were there. We’d stayed at the Purakaunui Bay campsite, which we had to ourselves. It was amazing to be able to camp right off the beach for $8 each. I’d expect this campsite would be much busier in summer. For the 12 hours we stayed here the only other person we saw was the Department of Conservation ranger. We also saw a large Sea Lion on the beach.