Falls Cafe walk

Here's the history...

...and here it is in reality.

I took the pictures I'm showing you over a period of two days. They were markedly different in sky color. 

This is a gate next to the hotel that leads through the park.

A detail of the entrance gate. 

I wish I had a blue sky background for this one.

Two bridges give access across the stream.

I'm at the Tui Glen Reserve.

What really constitutes wealth? 

I once worked with a man who had a very different outlook on life than I did. 
We were travelling together and I told him while we waited for our flight that I had recently made a huge find of morel mushrooms. 
"That's what you do in your spare time?" he asked, "You look for mushrooms?" 
"Sure," I said. "What do you like to do with your leisure?" 
"I don't have leisure. I use all my time to make money," he said. 

What a shame that is. I could have also told him how much I enjoyed finding a really big dead elm to use for firewood, except that I knew that he'd scoff that I needed to work in such a fashion to keep myself warm. Clearly, he had taken my measure and found me lacking. 

His idea of what constitutes wealth was very narrow. I think that I had a much broader, and healthier concept. While it was true that I didn't yet have much wealth as he defined it, I had many sorts of wealth he had no clue about. 

Now, I look at trees such as this oak pictured above, and remember how good I felt as a young man as I imagined how many days or weeks of fires such a tree represented. I felt wealthy standing before it and planning its harvest.  

Jeanne and I worked hard during our careers. We saved, and invested, and finally arrived at a point where we do have a modest measure of the sort of wealth my co-worker so valued. 
 I derive a huge amount of satisfaction when I think about the even greater wealth I still possess that can't be spent, or lost, or devalued. I have all the memories of the pleasure I took in living our quiet lives in a farming community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

I imagine that my old acquaintance has amassed quite a fortune. I wonder how satisfied he is with it? Does he every think about quality versus quantity? 

A winding path along the Henderson Stream.  From here it is possible to hike all the way to the motorway and join it's network of pathways. Allie has often run this route. 

Lemons hang over someone's backyard fence next to the path. 

Let's cross back again on another bridge.

I've completed my walk and am returning to the bustop for the ride toward home. I pass a monument to grape growers and vintners on the way.  -djf

"Wish you all could be here at Muriwai," sung to the tune of 'California Girls.'

Well, it's about 2 p.m. and the carparks are filling up. The Sand Dunz Beach Cafe, where we'll get milkshakes later before driving home, is busy as. The line at the order window was long when we drove past. We had driven down from the gannet watching carpark and were making our way through a couple of beach carparks, hoping to get one of the primo parking spots just over the dune from the beach. And we did. One of the last ones. Woohoo!  

And yet, as busy as it was, the beach doesn't appear very crowded, does it? That's the nice thing about having a huge beach...everybody has room to stretch.  

So, here's my last post about our excursion to Muriwai. Hope you enjoy it.

 Here we are, joining the throng.

 Lots of room for everyone.

Allie and Amiri have jandals on and are noting the suction between the beach and their shoes. Each must be unstuck with every step.  

 Arram meanwhile, finally got to limber up his legs and do some kicking.

 There goes another good kick, a goal if I ever saw one. The only trouble was that the beach grass you see on the slope of the dune was very stiff and most times would not let his ball roll back down to him. He finally got tired of climbing up to retrieve each kick and joined Allie and Amiri in the surf...with this ball of course. 

I noticed these marks in the sand all over the place and I don't know what caused them. They are in the very wet sand that is no longer getting washed over by the waves as low tide pulls the waves farther and farther down the beach. Does anyone know what makes such prints?

 I think these are sand art too, and even more appealing than the labyrinth my friends produced. 

Talk about crop-circles. 

 Arram's ball is in mid-juggle.

 There's a cave down there on this side of the headland too, but it's not the one we were in earlier. 

 Here is a closer look at it. 

 The house on the highest point above Muriwai. What a view, huh?

 Zooming in on the gannet rocks from the overlook on the road that climbs the cliff.

(The house in the last picture is even higher than the overlook area) 

One last look, then it's home again. 

Allie suggested that we get Thai food tonight. Jeanne deserves a night off from cooking. We all agreed. She tried for the first time a takeaway place at the Palamino Mall. We were happy with it.     -djf

The Birds of Muriwai

The gannets you'll be seeing today are Australasian gannets. They nest here, incubating their eggs for 44 days and then remain a bit longer while their young grow, practice flying, and get ready for their approximately 2000 km flight across to Austrailia. 

They are quite a spectacle to see and hear (and smell) and I was lucky enough to get a really good look at a pair of them as one returned from feeding and was welcomed home by its mate. (third video)

Here's the good stuff...

We are just starting our walk from the carpark to the first viewing platform. This is looking south. Look at the apparent size of the people down there. 

We're on the steps going down to the first platform. Arram agreed to pose for a picture here because, back in 2012, I took his picture not far from here. He looks happier today than he did way back then. He was feeling a bit grumpy that day I think. 

Same steps, same handrail, but Arram is now about twice as tall as he was in this picture. 

And here is Amiri standing tall above the thick carpet.  Allie is taking a break in the tall grass, much like Amiri is doing in the next picture. It was also taken on our 2012 trip. 

The view north from one of the viewing platforms. I didn't take many pictures from the platforms, but I did take some videos. 

In the past, when I uploaded my videos to Youtube, I was able to remove shakiness from the video. Today, I wanted to do the same with two of these, but could
no longer find the feature in the edit screen. So the first one shakes a bit unfortunately. The third video has a sequence in it too, when I try to zoom in on some terns, that also shakes. If, in their last 'upgrade,' Youtube removed that edit feature for good, I'm guess I'm going to have to get much better, and steadier, when I take my videos. I want to give you the best product  I can after all. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwU6_zWgY9w&feature=youtu.be



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvWfBwWGfxo



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU_q-WqhBcw&feature=youtu.be

To the right of the gannet platforms lie 'Fishermans' Rock. It's now at low tide, and the rock looks completely safe. During a high tide not long ago, a man was washed out to sea and drowned. 

After watching the gannets, I turned my attention to the north end of the beach, and noticed something about the blowhole rock. Check this out.

There is the rock and the blowhole.  The new cave-in looks bigger than it was.

 I first showed you a picture of the collapse of the rock surface near the blow hole on 1/17/17, but it looks as though that new hole has opened up even more since then. 

Well, Arram has been patiently waiting to go down and kick his soccer ball around on the beach for a while and we are all tired of smelling the gannets. While they are undoubtedly beautiful and entertaining to watch, their personal hygene habits leave a lot to be desired, and make viewing them in person for any length of time, from downwind, quite a trial.  

My next post will be from the beach.         -djf

South end of Muriwai

It's time to leave the cave and look for more adventures. Arram reports that crabs have been very scarce so far, in fact, nonexistent. That's not too surprising. Crabs love mud and Muriwai is not a muddy place. We'll keep our fingers crossed that maybe we'll find some crabs under the rocks we'll soon reach. 

We had just started our hike to the south end of the beach when I came across this lady marking in the sand. She is a sand artist. She said that she and her partner were planning to make a labyrinth. I'll check back later and see how it turns out...

There is another smaller rock formation above the car park. This one is much larger. 

The family has outdistanced me. They are almost to the south end. Look at the layers of rock. The largest boulder visible on the left side and many of the smaller ones are all pillow lava.

If you're interested, here is a link to an explanation of pillow lava. Who knew?

This site also has a much better picture of the cliff face that I showed you one picture above. 

https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/pillow-talk/

Lookin' for those elusive crabs...

Despite Arram's efforts, and those of the entire crab-hunting team, no living specimens were found. 

Here are some videos of the area...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2pxi__-7qU&feature=youtu.be

This next video shows a really tiny water fall Jeanne showed me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvnGUcV6PWA&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEgTFtajvIw&feature=youtu.be

There are some very narrow beaches (sandy) up there past those rocks. If I was 25 again, I'd have scaled the rock field to explore them. As it is though, that sort of thing is beyond me. 

I haven't adjusted the color. It's really that bright a green. 

I like this bit of cliff face. Just above the nearly horizontal crack line, on the lower right half of the picture, I can imagine small human-looking figures emerging from the rock. They make me think of the statues of saints I have seen in cathedrals in Europe. I can visualise larger statues in these grotto-like openings. The small picture below gives you an idea of what I'm talking about. 

  What do you see from your perches on the pillow?  "Goompa, (Arram coined a new term for grandpa) look up above the cliff."

As the afternoon wore on, many more surfers arrived to replace those coming out. 

It's lunch time. We have an ideal view. Allie has some chairs set up for Jeanne and I and the chilly bin holds our Subways. 

Food, water, and rest. Just what we all needed. 

Here is the product of the sand artists' creativity.  

The next post will take you to the gannet nesting rocks and I'll take a nostalgic look at a couple of places along the way.      -djf