Position 36 49.670S  174 25.797E

Another long day in the car with not a lot to see.  Christmas is one the way though.  Paul doing his ‘I thought we agreed not to buy each other Christmas presents this year’.  Yeah, right.

Rolling hills north of Pouto before we reached the floodplains of the Kaipara estuary.

We travelled right the way around the Kaipara estuary and finally stopped on the west coast at one of the surfing beaches called Muriwai before going to Waitakere Coastal Park tomorrow.  We are about 60km from Auckland but it doesn’t feel like it as the Waitakere Ranges are between us and there.  The sand here is black, derived from volcanic material with dark minerals in it, and it is seriously hot when the sun comes out, which it has today. 

The beach was like Bournemouth – or rather the bit near and between the life guard flags was. 

Gannets nest here on the cliff faces where it is easy to launch themselves off into the wind.

You can walk along the cliff top and take a look. 

The older gannets tend to have the inner places the newbies the outer nests.

Most of the ‘old timers’ had young.  They have just one chick which they feed for about 3 months.  With chicks of various sizes.  Some real fat lumps…and ugly..