Two trips to Muriwai

Muriwai is one of the west-coast beaches near home, on the other side of the Waitakere Ranges.  You park your car and then climb down a steep hill-- the easiest access through the cliffs-- to the beach.

At the top, looking down

At the bottom, looking back up 

The sand is strikingly black and has some curious qualities.  It doesn't 'pack' like regular sand and when you kick at it or let it fall through your fingers, it somehow moves in an unexpected way.  It's like individual grains are immediately subsumed into the whole without a trace.

'Yes, yes,' I can just hear the bored skeptics among you saying, 'I'm very happy that you're excited about the sand, Allie, that sounds sooo awesome.'  But wait!  It's really so cool!  I had my suspicions, so I brought some of the sand home in a bag and stuck a magnet to it.  Did you hear that?  I stuck a magnet to the sand.  The sand is made of teeny bits of iron.  No, that's its name: ironsand.  My Dad made a joke about using a magnet if we ever got any of it in our eyes.  But then it turns out that that's actually a Done Thing too.

And, AND, there are little streams that flow down from the cliffs and then kinda percolate their water under the sand on their way to the ocean.  So that's water underneath, and sand on top, right, sand which we've already established doesn't behave quite like you'd think?  Why, that's a recipe for quicksand, I reckon!  And yes, there are plenty of places on the beach where the sand kind of quivers under your feet when you step on it.  It reminded me of walking on a waterbed when I was a little kid... that droopy, semi-solid feeling. 

I did some Hazard Assessments prior to allowing the junior team members to check it out, and it turns out that sinking more than an inch or two into this quicksand actually requires active participation on the part of the victim.  So this stuff isn't going to swallow you up.  Which then led to much frolicking and melodramatic squealing as we dashed from rock to rock ('Safe!!') over and through the Quicksand Pits.

Before I get too involved in my story-telling, here are the boys sitting on a log and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The beach is bounded by spectacular cliffs.  The pictures don't capture the sense you get there, that very small and humbling feeling of, 'What, I'm just walking here and seeing this??'  Nature has created a massive treasure at Muriwai, you guys.

OK, so finally we got tired of the beach.  So we clambered back up the big hill and went and checked out the viewing platforms on the edges of the cliffs.  But before we got there, the boys got sidetracked by leaping into the exuberant growth of what I'm terming 'pillow grass.'  It is so deep and soft it can swallow a boy whole.  THAT'S the danger at this beach, people, not that quicksand. 

To allay any fears of creepy-crawlies that we'd reasonably have as Americans, NZ is free of ticks, spiders, and snakes.  OK, there COULD be wetas in there and that is problematic*.  But at least wetas won't bite.

It turns out that Muriwai is famous not only for its surf and scenery but for being home to one of the largest NZ colonies of nesting gannets.   So here are the gannets.  (These photos are old, from back in February!)

So.  Right.  The gannets build themselves little dirt-cup nests at wing-length intervals on the flat ledges of the cliffs.  They are there for several months, the time it takes to lay and incubate the eggs and for the babies to fledge. 

The video gives you a good sense for the noise associated with a big gannet colony.  But what you can't appreciate here is the smell.  The white streaks on the rocks are their guano.  And no joke, these are some smelly birds.  There must be tons of bird poo on those rocks.  Which would by itself be bad enough, but gannets are sea birds, who eat only fish.  And oh gosh, we were there on a hot day.  And the breeze was coming in from the sea.

 Aaaaaaauuuuugh!  Fishy bird poo!!!

And then we were tired so we went home.  The boys slept the whole way back.

*I didn't tell you!  I saw a weta!  A real one, out in nature!  It ran out of some tall grass, looked at me, and ran back in.  It looked like a fat cricket and was not actually that terrifying.  I didn't scream or anything.