Livermore New Zealand: Sunday December 25th Christmas-black sand beach

Sunday December 25th Christmas-black sand beach

Today was Christmas and the kids awoke to a few pieces of candy and a few trinket toys in their shoe and they loved it. We ate breakfast and could barely contain Gabriel from running out to the beach right outside our door. He swam for hours with Tara and Brody. It was low tide and the kids kept having to go out further and further to stay in the water. It was absolutely amazing how far out the water retreats to in this harbor-I would guess almost a kilometer!

Christmas shoe.

Gabe and Tara swimming outside our cottage.

Tara at the beach.

We came in and cleaned up for lunch before Gabe, Dad and Tara headed back into the water (yes, they are starting to grow gills). Tara was swimming with her new friend Skyler while Gabe got it in his head to run across the harbor/ocean floor to an island that was now accessible on foot since the tide was at its low point. The distance was incredibly deceptive and we walked and walked forever. There were countless shells below us and small to moderate sized crabs picking at us (we had our crocs on).

There were a few mud pits. I made it through one but was stuck in the other up to my knee in black sand and brown mud! I barely pulled my crocs out and made it back to the other side of the quick mud. Gabe, was absolutely possessed to make it to the island and he did by sheer will alone. I have some distance photos of it because I couldn’t make it any further.

While we were swimming, Mom and Brody went with our neighbor Rick and his grandson Dylan to hung for fossils. They found a jar full of fossils from the Jurassic period (160 million years old). Brody was very proud to have excavated a few on his own. They are Belemnite fossil squids. The fossil is of the bullet-shaped internal shell.

The whole way to the island we walked on clam like shells and crabs. See the crab in the middle? One of its claws is sticking up.

Gabe made it all the way to the island, I took the picture from here. He looks small.

When everyone regrouped we decided to head to Te Puia Hot Springs Beach. We have seen some cool things, this is one of the best. Although we sit on the “beach,” it is actually covered by water on high tide, this beach has miles of black sand stretching as far as the eye can see in both directions. To get there you have to climb some fairly large dunes. We had invited our neighbor kids to come and so Brody and Dylan jumped into waves in the water while Gabriel dug around. The girls, Mom, Tara, and Skyler all dug a nice hot water sauna. As people left around them they dug trenches to connect them and had quite an elaborate system before we had to leave. Hard to describe the beauty of that place. The bad news is there is one small faucet (not a shower) so we had five black sandy children to pile into the van!

We took a bottle of the black sand to keep. It has Fe in it and so can be hours of fun with a magnet! We got cleaned up and then ate a late dinner before heading off to bed. Even though we are in the middle of no where, everyone staying around this area comes here. We had quite the busy collection of camper vans and backpackers camping out around us. Overall, it was a surprisingly quiet night for the number of people around us.