MURIWAI !

Another Christmas excursion for us is to Muriwai. Muriwai includes a windswept rugged coastline, about 60km of surf beach and rolling dunes of black sand. It is it one of Auckland's most popular west coast beaches.





You arrive at Maori Bay and walk up to Muriwai Beach. There, at the top, is the spectacular Takapu (gannet) Refuge at Otakamiro Point, one of only three mainland gannet colonies in New Zealand.





The best time to visit the gannets is between October in February. The chicks hatch in November then leave for Australia at 15 weeks old (they don't all make it) and return to breed when they are seven years old.



Here we are at the beginning of the walk, some kindly American passer-by took our photo. The gannet colony ends up directly below you - and you smell it before you see it - fishy!





You can see that the rock they nest on at sea, used to be joined to the mainland - just behind Sophia. The gannets are spectacular to watch, their wings are 2 metres across and they fish just off shore. they hit the water at about 100kph - which makes the fishermen out on the rocks jealous!







This place is unique as it's the only gannet colony you can get this close to, and it doesn't seem to bother them a bit - you can look down on their nests and see them feeding the chicks and bringing back their fish.