A young couple
rounded the rocks and walked towards us. Fresh and windblown they seemed happy
in tee shirts and shorts. “Did you see any”? My wife said, zipping up her
fleece against the onshore wind. “About nine”, the girl replied. “They're
coming in at about three an hour”. We watched as the pair skipped the remaining
boulders and headed towards the car park. And then made our way, gingerly, around the
rocky outcrop and on to the beach.
Our camper van was in the car park just
a short walk from the sea. Like everywhere here in New Zealand, it was all so
well sign posted, so well maintained and all so new looking. “It all looks so
new”, I said to my wife. “Earthquakes”, she said. We'd seen plenty of road
works, but earthquake repair, was that it? The country was like Europe
condensed into a land not much bigger than Britain. It had it all: fjords,
mountains, plains and beaches, renewing and reshaping like nowhere else. We'd
walked the Tongariro Alpine Pass and experienced the smell of sulphur as it
steamed from the earth, and wondered at red volcanic craters and greeny-blue
lakes. We watched geysers spitting boiling water metres into the air and lay in
hot pools dug in the sand. We walked in city parks where the ground boiled and
visited Napier, a town rebuilt in Art Deco style after being totally destroyed
by an earthquake the1930s. “It's certainly a dynamic place”, I said.
Waves crashed
across the sand as we reached a sign that said to go no further and to keep
dogs on a lead. A big wave crashed in, covering our feet, forcing us to
scramble on to the low lying ochre coloured rocks. We waited in the wind under
a bright blue sky, watching the turquoise and white surf.
Suddenly a bird appeared just off the
beach, head up and body floating behind, it seemed to be watching the surf,
like us, gauging the waves as they broke onto the sand. It disappeared as
another mountain of water collapsed into white foam, but as the sea withdrew,
there it was, standing upright on the sand. It started up the beach with that
characteristic walk, like someone with trousers down round their ankles,
vanishing after reaching the rocks and small bushes at the base of the cliff. A
second bird came in and stopped on the sand. It turned with little wings held
out to either side, watching the surf, as if waiting. Another bird appeared
from an incoming wave and obviously happy to be together, they waddled, hopped
and jumped towards the cliff edge. Two beautiful Tawaki, Fiordland Crested
penguins, making their way to a nest where their young would be waiting.
We left soon after, the sun quite low by
then. A young couple approached from the car park. “Have you seen any”? They
asked. “Three”, we said. “In the past hour”
