Today is the day that Haywood has been waiting for this entire trip, the day that we see the Three Sisters and their rock orbs but first, we visited another beautiful beach and drove miles on an abandoned, unsealed highway along the ocean and through rolling hills.
The first beach we went to is called Tunnel Beach. To get to it you have to go through a stone tunnel that has been carved out of the rocks. It was originally used as a way to get goods to boats without having to go over the huge cliffs. At high tide the water comes all the way up to the cliffs so they are sheer and have more interesting looking algae growing on them. We made sure to get there at low tide so we could actually see the beach, which is a typical New Zealand black sand beach (due to the iron in the sand.) There are a few places to camp outside the tunnel, but other then that it is very secluded. This was probably the most beautiful beach we had been to yet because of the diversity of scenery and it’s isolation.
Just for fun here is a second picture of the same beach.
The second beach of the day was another black sand beauty called the Three Sisters because of three large rock formations jutting out of the water. This beach is also supposed to have perfectly shaped rock sphere that have been shaped and polished by the sea. We arrived at the turn off for the three sisters at about 1 pm but the sand path to the three sisters was already cut off by the rising tide (we had been warned to get there at low tide, but it just wasn‘t possible. When we realized that the tide was too high to see the sisters we thought perhaps we might wait it out. After about an hour reading our books and watching the tide continue to come in, we decided that if we were going to see the three sisters, which was half the reason to visit the west side of the island, we were going to need to swim to them. I don’t know why this didn’t occur to us earlier, the swim was delightful and the three sisters were gorgeous. We didn’t get any pictures because there was no way to take a camera but we assure you it was well worth the trip!
This picture of the three sisters was stolen from www.teara.govt.nz on which it is an example for erosion.
We then made our way to New Plymouth which is an ocean town. They have a walkway along the ocean for the entirety of the town with a wind wand at its center. W couldn’t quite tell if the wind wand moved or looked like two dancers, as it was billed, but it was interesting anyway and a worthwhile walk. We made a nice virtuous salad for dinner since we didn’t do any big hikes today and ate it outside which made for a nice summery feel to the end of the day.
