Life's a picture perfect beach PART 2

kiaora8
Jan 18, 2017
5 min read

A photographers’ piece of paradise. Sunrises, surf, sand, sea shells!!!

New Zealand is a geographically small, little place (with a comparatively minute population), although when I looked up its size on Google I found out that the North Island is apparently the 14th largest island in the world. New Zealand has a total coastline of 15,134 km (9,400 miles) and just in my local little town of Whakatane / Ohope we have several great ‘beaches’ that are (mostly) easily accessible and fun for a range of different activities! Although home to just over 20,000 people, Whakatane/Ohope has a number of very skilled photographers. Three talented local photographers were kind enough to allow me to share a couple of their photos on this blog post! Please respect their artistic integrity and if you’d like to reproduce/use their photos in any way or form, then please contact them directly. (A link to the photographers Facebook page can be found by clicking on the photo or the link under their copyrighted photo).

Photo by Stephen Kast (c) Photo by Neil Robert Hutton (c)

One particularly popular beach with the local shutterbugs is Ohope (pronounced or-horp-eh) Beach. A favorite of many talented photographers, they’ve created a Facebook page where photos of this picture perfect beach are shared! Check it out! It was voted New Zealands’ “Most Loved Beach” in 2014, with its 11 km of beautiful white sandy beaches, stunning sun rises and safe swimming – Ohope is the perfect beach for those of us who like to get our tan on and have a little play in the waves. Although it’s one of our best loved beaches, it is hardly ever crowded and you can normally find a little place along it somewhere, just for yourself! It’s a great place for a romantic moonlit walk on the beach or a private bon fire with friends (just remember to obtain a fire permit from the District Council first) or witnessing the sun rising on a lonely early morning jog. Ahhh, the road less travelled!!! It’s also becoming very popular for stand up paddle boarding and there are often good modest sized waves especially suited to long boarding.

At the West End of Ohope Beach, there is a popular little point called... (wait for it)..... ‘West End’. West End has a great beach break suitable for all levels of surfers. A mellow wave, it’s ‘sweet as’ for longboarding at most times of the year. My husband enjoys surfing there (shortboard) when there are tropical storms blowing in, but the waves are still suitable for our 14 year old son (who is at an intermediate level of surfing) even when it’s pumping for West End! A very popular area of Ohope beach it is about 2 kilometers from the Lifeguard Tower and a great beach for building sandcastles with the little ones and splashing in the waves together while you wait for the surfers to come in for something to eat! The Lifeguard Tower is located behind the shops by the park at the bottom of the hill (over from Whakatane), so if you’re planning on swimming, that’s the place to be.

Just over the rise from West End, a 15 minute walk up the reasonably steep Pohutukawa tree lined track is the secluded shelly bay of Otarawairere. I’m going to be honest, I’m not a fan of walking up steep bush tracks, so I rarely venture over, but the scenery is definitely worth the effort. If Lionel (the hubby) walks over with you, it’s a lovely place for a picnic & paddle. Personally, I have enough trouble getting myself over there that I’d rather not take a picnic hamper as well. But hey, if Lionel is going over with you, you may as well take the surf cast fishing rod and the snorkeling gear too! Swim around the rocks and find yourself a feed of kina – New Zealands’ Sea Urchin – another thing I’m not a fan of – but a creamy salty delicacy to many!

If you fancy yourself as a bit of a photographic artist then the Eastern Bay of Plenty on New Zealands’ North Island is the place to develop those skills. Slow shutter speeds to capture the movement of the waves, or the sparkling stars over Wairaka. Like much of the East Coast of NZ, the beaches are ‘picture perfect’ especially if you know what you are doing with a camera! (Okay, some of our beaches are effectively North facing, but we still call it the ‘East Coast’). One such North Facing beach is The Heads, home to the memorialised Wairaka (pronounced Why-rra-car). Over the hill from New Zealand’s Most Loved Beach in Whakatane (named after the eponymous ancestor Wairaka – a story I’ll tell on another day), The Heads is another picturesque part of this place and on a clear day, New Zealands’ active off shore volcano Whakaari (White Island) appears to be only a stones throw away. The perfect place to eat your fish n’ chips or do a spot of surf casting (fishing), the waves get pretty epic during cyclone season (January to April) and surfers have been known to come from far and wide when it’s really pumping. When the waves are epic, you need some kahunas to get out the back, so it is definitely suited to more experienced surfers. However, most of the time the bar crossing is safe for boats to travel out to Moutuhora (Whale Island) and Whakaari (White Island) and kids enjoy jumping off the wharf to the dismay of many. I’m looking forward to the proposed upgrade the district has for the area; the kids park is already a great asset but it’s looking like it’ll be a lot more fun for families once the upgrade has taken place.

If you’re travelling without kids and would just rather not or prefer solitude, then traveling West out of Whakatane, across from ‘The Hub’ shops, you’ll come upon Coastlands Beach. Put out the long line or throw out the surf caster and relax until you catch your dinner, no one will see you tanning those winter white thighs. A friendly neighbourhood dog might sniff out your bait and come and say hi as they enjoy a walk with their owner, but if it’s privacy you’re after, you’ve come to the right place. Collect some shells, drift wood and pumice and imagine you could live every day like this. And remember to take some photos to show off when you return to the hustle and bustle of the real world.