Three Hidden Gems- Coromandel

Catch-up

While David went fishing I went exploring, this time picking a perfect blue sky day which is still not the best for photography but one heck of a lot better than the mono tone of grey I had the other day.

I travelled north of Simpsons Beach over the winding and hilly road through the Coromandel Forest Park towards Kuaotunu turning right into the little village just before the highway takes a sharp left and runs along the coast towards Matarangi and on over the range to Coromandel Town on the west side of the peninsula. 

We've explored the Kuaotunu Peninsula on our last visit to the Coromandel but there's nothing like revisiting one of your favourite areas again and especially when it's such a lovely day. 

Once through the village it's onto the notoriously steep, narrow and gravel Black Jack Road which climbs steadily up and over a headland. I stopped at the top to take a photo looking back towards Kuaotunu Beach, Rings Beach and the far one, Matarangi. Hidden behind the tree is Whangapoua and way out of frame the world famous New Chums Beach (all links are of my blogs from previous visits).

Just a little further on and the road drops down to the first of my hidden gems; Otama Beach. I stop again to take a quick photo, there's no traffic on the road so I'm able to pull up when I see a gap between the trees. 

This may be of interest to some; see the square dark colour building towards the bottom left? (click the photo to enlarge). It was the 2003 Home of the Year & 2005 Home of the Decade. It appears often on TV and in magazines to do with architecture, home & garden or holidays, click the link to see more. I'm sure that green shed above it must house a spa pool! Actually I doubt it as the bach has a bath on wheels which can be wheeled out onto the deck.

Otama Beach is stunningly beautiful and totally deserted except for one lonely swimmer.

I zoom in along the beach towards the small holiday settlement at the far end of the beach and spot the swimmer's partner sitting in the dunes. The glare off the white quartz sand is intense, sunglasses are definitely needed today.

I carry on to the settlement at the end of the beach where there's a large grass reserve overlooking the beach and the Otama River outlet. There are a number of large gnarly pohutukawas hanging off the small cliffs above the beach... 

...and stairway access down to the beach.

At the bottom of the stairs a swing hangs forlornly off  a large pohutukawa branch and in the loose sand, hundreds of footprints belie the fact that the beach is once again, deserted.

Then it's back in the ute and up and over the next headland, stopping again at the top to take in the views. This one is looking out towards the Mercury Islands.

And then it's down the otherside to gem #2 (and IMO the jewel in the crown of nearly all the Coromadel Peninsula beaches)...

This is beautiful Opito Bay...

...with it's dazzling white sand and crystal clear waters. And just like Otama, the sand squeaks under foot too- overseas, white quartz beaches are often called 'singing beaches' because of this sound.

At the far end of Opito Bay there's a walk out along the headland to the Opito Point Pa site, and like most headland pa sites it has 360 degree views and is surrounded by steep cliffs which would have thwarted approaching attackers.

The front lawn is a public reserve, but how's the position of this holiday home. You can see a corner of it in the photo above. I have my lunch at the picnic table enjoying the warm sun and the sound of silence.

Opito Bay has gone a lot more upmarket since our early days of visiting it by boat and anchoring in the bay. Many of the traditional baches have been replaced with flash new holiday homes and instead the old trusty (& often rusty) tractor parked in drive, Sealegs on Stabicraft boats are now the norm. 

This guy trundled along the road behind me, then across the reserve, down the access track, across the beach and into the water. Then with hardly a hint of hesitation, he started the outboard, raised the legs and was off. I can see why Sealegs are so popular; it was so much quicker than hauling the boat down there on a trailer, launching it, having someone hold the boat and park the tractor, etc.

This is one of my old photos, taken from our launch in January 2007- those are tractors and trailers lined up along the beach waiting for their boats to return from a day's fishing. Opito Bay provides the shortest and most direct route to the Mercury Islands so it is popular place in the height of summer.

It was time for me to head to the next hidden gem which is indeed quite well hidden, and not so well known.

Matapaua Bay is a tiny little bay with just a handful of houses, tucked into the south side of the Kuaotunu Peninsula and fronting the north side of Mercury Bay (does that make sense?- check the map below for more detail). The road over to the bay is very narrow, steep and winding and not recommended for anything larger than a regular vehicle.  

It's late afternoon by now and the sun is quickly disappearing off the beach. It takes me all of  5 minutes to walk from one end of the bay to the other and I'm sure I'm the only one to have set foot on the beach in days.

From Matapaua Bay I zoom in on The Twins/Motumanga, two small island rocks in Mercury Bay that are popular for fishing and diving around.

I spot some movement at the far end of the beach and watch as a pair of endangered New Zealand Dotterel/Tuturiwhatu hurry along the tide line in my direction. I sit down in the sand and wait for them to pass. 

They scurry along for a few metres then stop and probe the seaweed, them move again, stop, probe, look, probe, then it's off again, their tiny little legs moving in a blur as they change course quickly when a sand hopper bounces out from underneath them. For a change they weren't too worried about me sitting quietly in the sand and I was able to get some great shots of them as they moved up the beach and then back past me again. This is their territory and they must spend all day sweeping back and forward along the beach. 

It was time for me to head home after a very successful and enjoyable day exploring, and not for the first time, I think how lucky I am to be able to experience these magic days.

THAT Road Trip

We pulled out of White Star around lunch time and drove the short distance to Cabbage Bay, just past the tiny settlement of Colville. We parked up on foreshore reserve where we began our anxious wait for 5 o’clock to roll around. 

Low tide at Cabbage Bay

I wandered off to do a bit of bird watching & located a healthy population of around 20 or so NZ Dotterel & a few Banded Dotterel (and a dotterel that was banded), the tide was on its way in & they were congregating around a small stream to swim & preen.

The critically endangered NZ Dotterel with a Banded Dotterel behind

 

 As previously mentioned we’d made the decision to leave for Port Jackson late in the afternoon so we wouldn’t meet too much traffic, if any at all. Most campers leave Port Jackson & the other two smaller DOC camps, Fantail Bay & Fletchers Bay in the morning when they’re also less likely to strike opposing traffic and any day-trippers would hopefully be at the tail end of their outward bound journey where the road isn’t quite so bad to pass.

The hours ticked by very slowly & every vehicle that went past David analysed; "Was that a local? Would they be coming back down later? Was that bus heading up? Thank God that truck left early; no need to meet him on the road. Oh no how many more are heading south?" There did seem to be quite a number compared with when we did the trip on the weekend. By 4 o’clock we could stand it no longer, let’s just DO IT! Get this over & done with. It is, after all, only 26 kilometres.

And it was fine for the first 10 or so kilometres, we did meet three or four cars but we were able to pull over on the verge to let them past. Unfortunately the sun was low in the sky, the glare & the reflection off the dash onto the windscreen were bad. We hadn’t allowed for that when deciding to leave later in the afternoon. We managed to get through all the one way bridges ok, they had ample room, but it was a little tight on the first ford. I had to hop out & hold back a marker post that was leaning inwards so the van could squeeze past. There was enough room but you had to approach them dead head on which was a little difficult when there was a corner just before. David got it right on the next couple though & we sailed through.

We cautiously crept up to every blind corner, with the chief navigator & sometimes co-pilot straining to see around the right hand ones to confirm that there were no cars approaching. I was also looking well ahead when the road was in view to report any noticeable dust clouds which would mean a car was heading our way. On one occasion we pulled into safe area and waited about 5 minutes for a car to pass, we could see it coming way off in the distance.

  
We knew the last third of the road was going to be the worse and it was. I had to keep reporting on the distance between the van wheels & the edge on my side with the van being wider than the ute. David was tending to hug the road wall on his side but occasionally he had to pull it round a tight & narrow corner. Whenever I said “you had about 6 inches spare ” he knew it was serious. There were a number of “bottomless” culverts with no edge that dropped away into the tide below, they scared me a bit, lose a wheel into one of those & we’d have been a goner.
 

 
Finally the long & tough haul up the side of a steep hill, over the top and Channel Island came into view. We both breathed a sigh of relief, not long now. But as luck would have it, we met two cars on the downhill stretch, both on blind corners, both came to a skidding halt & both had to back up. We had to pull off the road as best we could to manoeuvre past them, I tried not to look too closely over the edge. 

One hour 45 minutes after leaving Colville we pulled into the campground just in time to watch the sun disappear over Kaiiti Point & the sky to turn a brilliant orange. We can now rest up for eight days, problem is David is already thinking about his plan of attack for the return leg. We’ll be leaving at 6am in the morning………

 

More photos here of Port Jackson

 

 

Leucistic Oystercatcher





We went for a drive today to see some of the stunning coastline in this area & in a small bay that shall remain nameless we stumbled across quite a number of birds resting on the shell banks up at the high tide mark, they were a lot closer than the birds at Miranda which made it a great opportunity to bird watch for awhile.

 

 

It was a surprise to spot in amongst the oystercatchers a rare pure white bird. There are two species of oystercatchers in NZ; the Variable Oystercatcher which is a slighly smaller all black bird & the South Island Pied Oystercatcher which is a larger black & white bird & they both hang out together.
 

This white bird looks like a leucistic variable oystercatcher going by its size (leucism is a condition characterized by reduced pigmentation in animals, it is not albino as they don't have pink eyes)   . And also the possibility that it could be the very same white bird, nicknamed Blanche, that had been seen around the Kawakawa Bay area a few years ago, Kawakawa Bay is across the Firth of Thames, not very far as the crow flies or in this case the oystercatcher. Blanche hasn't been spotted there for a couple of seasons so it looks like I have re-discovered her! What a thrill. 

Along with the oystercatchers there was a healthy population of the endangered New Zealand Dotterels resting in the warm sand & not very keen to move either which allowed me to crawl very close.



NZ Dotterel



And behind the dotterels also resting in the sand were a small number of Godwits, these looked like juvenile non breeding Godwits that won't be flying all those thousands of kilometers to Siberia. They'll be wintering over here in NZ.



It's amazing what you see in a small group of birds when you spend the time to scan them & allow them to resettle. This poor soul has not only the wrong colourings but has deformed feet although he could have lost them to a clam.

More photos here of  Coromandel & Miranda Shorebirds