The caves of Bethell's and O'Neil's

You already know that I like caves. At present count, Bethell's has five caves, a large crack, and two small ones that water comes through. O'Neil's has one cave. Here is a tour of most of the points, or rather, holes, of interest.   

The descending sun is giving us some great color. Starting on the right, you see two caves close together. Then a narrow one behind the person in red, and a really narrow crack farthest left. 

Here are the first two on the right side, shown from a slightly different angle.

I go in this one, 

and come out this one. 

Here's the narrow one, just left of center in the first picture.

This one doesn't go as far in as the other two do.

I'm not going to call this one a cave. I suppose that it qualifies, but I think it's more of a crack than a cave. 

For the next cave, we have to go to the southern end of Bethell's. Find the highest point of land in this picture, and look straight below it. The cave is shaped like a mouse-hole in a cartoon. It is about 1 kilometer away. 

We're getting close now. The beach is littered with seaweed and boasts oddly shaped rocks.

There it is. The sea in front of it looks fairly harmless right now,

But the currents here are flowing in all directions and when they meet, the water can only go straight up.

Jeanne is going for a closer look at the 'mouse hole' and then at the 5th of Bethell's caves.  This last one is to Jeanne's left. If you look carefully, there is line about 20 feet in front of Jeanne that runs from the sea to the left edge of the picture. This is the channel from the sea to the fifth cave. It doesn't look wide from this angle and distance but it is.  

This is the fifth cave. You can see it has a sand floor. The floor lies about 6 feet down from the ledge of rock Jeanne is standing on.  It's tempting.  It looks like you could climb down and walk up into the cave without getting your feet wet.

But then, this happens. This shows the leading edge of a 3 or 4 foot high, very fast moving wave that rushes into the cave. I don't know how far in the cave goes, or how high the sand gets, or if a person would be safe if he got to the end of the cave before the wave came, but I don't intend to find out.  

This is looking away from the fifth cave. This is the channel the water rushes up into the cave through, and right now, you see the water running back out.
Jeanne was standing and watching all this happen when a wave came up over the ledge she is on and went over her gumboots.  You can see that this ledge is wet. High tide is only about 1 hour away and we decided it was time to get out of there. There is no seaweed growing here and the volcanic rocks give excellent traction, but the power of the waves can be intimidating. 

We're on our way back. The twin  peaks above Jeanne are the north end of Bethell's. They're about 1.8 kilometers away.

We have now left the north end of Bethell's now and are looking down on to O'Neil's.  Its cave is about 1 kilometer away. The hills are the beginning of the Waitakere Range. The highest peaks in the range are just under 2,000 feet. 

Look, Jeanne is waiting for us. "Come on in," she says.  

Here's another view of the cave that I really like. What appears to be another cave on the right side is just a 'concavity.' Goes in just a few feet under the overhang.

Plenty of headroom and even a few shells lie around for those who want them. This cave even has a back door, as you can see. BTW, the bag Jeanne is carrying is for rubbish that she picks up from the beach. Both she and Allie always do that.  

There's a bit of a draft in here but the view from the picture window is spectacular. 

Jeanne is sitting just to the right of the 'back door' of the cave.

It's getting really late in the day. The surf  is getting even wilder and it's time to go home.

Back at Bethell's the crowds are disappearing. Rain is visible in the west. Sidney, Australia is about 1,300 miles from this beach.  -djf