Taranaki Region Day One: Urenui

Urenui

Driving north from Stratford, we found a campsite that was right by the beach.

 To get to the beach, though, you had to jump down a small cliff that someone had carved makeshift steps into. From frequent use, the steps had worn away to be what is generally regarded as an angle too steep for steps. (The next day we found out that there was an actual path that we just didn't see. How clever of us.)

The area around Urenui is known for its white cliffs, so we went to the start of the White Cliffs Walk. Upon reading the walk map, we found that a lot of it was along the top of the cliffs through paddocks and as it was quickly becoming evening we thought we would just walk along the beach to see them from below instead.

On the beach, we saw that someone had sketched what appeared to be a diagram of a large intestine. That, or it could have just been squiggly lines in the sand. I also found a rock that looked like a rectangular block of holey Swiss cheese but neglected to take a photo. 

Yannick saw a so-called "walking stick" at the waters edge and proceeded to offer it to me, but I graciously declined, saying it would better suit him. He got sandy droplets of water all over himself while posing for this photo. The only person I can see using this as a walking stick would be a wizard, but it would double as a staff.

Here we saw a small...waterfall I guess you would call it. It looked like was from pipe because it was running with some speed and was jettisoned away from the wall rather than trickling down it, but we couldn't see a pipe.  

I then became distracted by collapsing parts of a ledge of sand that I found and didn't notice Yannick taking this picture through the waterfall.

On the walk back I tried to find the cheese rock again, but was unsuccessful and decided that next time I find a rock that looks like a cheese, I will keep it as a souvenir.