NZ 45: Muriwai Beach

Muriwai Beach, New Zealand (Jun 6, 2008)

Before returning to the US, we made a stop in Auckland, were some friend of us live. Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to spend there before getting back, but we were able at least to spend a weekend at their place. It was nice, after many years since we last saw each other. We arrived at about dinner time, and we met at the cooperative pre-school where their kids are going (event hough, since we left, the oldest has started primary school). The occasion for meeting there was the celebration of Matariki, the Maori new year, announced by the apparition of the Pleiades in the northern sky. The exact day of the celebration depends on the iwi, but it is in general between June and July. To celebrate, we ate hangi food, cooked to reproduce the traditional Maori way of cooking by hot stones and vapour in a covered pit.


The next day we went to Muriwai beach. Despite the very uncertain weather, the place was quite spectacular. The photo above shows weird cliffs with a strange polygonal pattern on top: the little geometrically disposed mounds are garnet nests, now abandoned until the next nesting season. The little photo on the left has our friends Kendra and Greg, with little Lenya carried by her mom (while Tycho and Halen were probably playing on a very vertical a sand dune with their grandparents - which are really great people and adopted us while we were there).