Argitaratu: 25.12.2023
After yesterday's exertions, today we treat ourselves to breakfast on the beach. We then drive to the starting point of our hike. We are greeted by two peacocks and two ducks. One duck can even be petted. We walk through green fields and hills and come out past endless sand dunes. The sand is actually not as comfortable as usual for running and we fight our way through the dunes to the beach. There are some caves in the huge rocks that are great for fishing. A photo of a very well-known Windows 10 screen saver was taken from one cave. I try to recreate the photo from the right angle, but it doesn't quite work. If anyone asks, the lighting conditions are to blame. In search of the seal colony, we continue along the beach and discover incredibly beautiful rock formations. We turn around without a seal and look for the entrance to our hike in the sand dunes. As already described in the travel guide, it's not that easy. Tired of walking in the sand all the time, we don't feel like it anymore and take a lunch break on a high dune and enjoy the view. Then we walk back to the car, sit in the café and then simply drive through the highlights of the hike. In the middle there is a seal colony, which we also find. After almost being heartbroken because I thought the seal was dead, it actually moves and I can breathe a sigh of relief again. In total we even discovered 3 seals on the rocks and they were all alive. From the next parking lot we would have had to walk for over an hour, which we didn't feel like doing anymore, so we drove back to the campsite. We're planning our next stop there, because we're worried we won't get any more space because of the holidays. We plan our entire meal for the next few days and write a very, very long shopping list. We have a pretty long drive ahead of us the next day. On the way we stop at the largest cold water springs in the southern hemisphere. The place is sacred to the Maori and the clear water is well known as one of the clearest anywhere. We sit in the car for a total of seven hours and we are happy when we finally arrive at the campsite after the bulk shopping.