A new New Year's Eve cave at Muriwai

Okay, the cave I'm going to show you today is not really new. It has always been there at Muriwai. It's just that we have never been able to explore it before because the tide has always filled it when we've been here. Take a look at how it has appeared to us in the past. This first picture was taken on 12-31-2017.  Notice that an arrow points at an indentation in the rocks that the level of the water makes obvious.  I'll explain that shortly.


BTW, the pictures on this post and on the one that follows were taken just before the sunset pictures that I published on New Year's Day. You assumed that I'm sure.  

Now, take a look at this picture I took on 12-31-19. 

Same cave. The first picture was taken from the top of the rocks on the left side of the cave.  I'm now standing on the sand between the two sides. You can readily see how much the tide varies here. 

Someone cut steps into the stone on the right side outside of the cave. That top step is the indentation that I point to with the arrow in the first picture. 

 Allie and the boys have joined me.  Notice that Arram is pointing at a place on the wall. 

 He was pointing at this. Just above the center of this picture is another sort of stone buried in the rock.

A closeup. Something carried along within the lava. Amazing. 

 We're father inside now but there is still plenty of light here.  

 But not so much here. We are at the back of the cave, or almost anyway. My flash can only light up the center of my field. There wasn't enough to reach the walls behind them and form an image. 
It was so much fun in there.  I must just be a silhouette in Allie's picture. 

On our way back out. 

Getting back to the well-lit portions.

 I really dislike graffiti, but this caught my attention. I was born in 1951.  

 We're back to a world of color.       

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Bonus cave picture gallery. 

Many of the pictures I took in the cave failed because it was just too dark. The cave was large enough that, even with my flash on, I couldn't light it enough to get a good picture. 

That's where an editing feature on the computer came in handy. You can add light to any picture, so that's what I did to enhance my dark cave pictures. 

I'll show you a few 'before' and 'after' shots. 

 We're already well in to the cave here, but after you go through the passage just ahead, it gets much darker....

 Above - natural light   Below - enhanced

 Above - flash    Below - enhanced flash

 Above - flash,   Below - enhanced flash

 This is the very back of the cave. You can see the sand that is just left of center that makes up the floor of the cave.  (Note that is has both white and black sand components.)  If I were a much younger and slimmer person, I could have wormed my way around the rock in the foreground, and crawling on that sand, extended my arm through the narrow opening between the sides and possibly touched the back wall at the very center of this picture. I don't know if my arm would have been quite long enough, but I could have done it with a short stick. Hopefully, that gives you some idea of the scale of the cave. 

Above - flash    Below - enhanced flash

 This is a closer view of the very end of the cave. 

This is an enhanced view of a picture I showed you earlier.  This shot makes me remember how it felt to stand in there.      

(Notice that there appears to be graffiti carved in the rock near the upper right corner of the picture.)

As if going to the beach, exploring the cave, seeing the gannets, the blowhole, (in the next post) and the sunset weren't enough. I also dug my fingers down into the sand as far back in the cave as my age and girth would allow, and brought some home.  What a treasure.  

I think you can see that this sand is a mixture of white and black, just like you saw in the picture of the back of the cave. 

One last word about treasure...

I have recently acquired a treasure of a type that very few people have ever even heard of, much less seen. It is something new, something just recently named, (and you know how I like unique names.) It is so special that I need a special device to properly see, or display it. I have ordered one. When it arrives, I hope I can get some pictures that will do this treasure justice. You'll be able to see it as it really is, not just how our limited senses can perceive it. Keep watching....              -djf