January 27 Beaches (Day122)
A good weather day is forecast so we headed out to see the beaches along the Southern Scenic Route to the west. Just a short 25 minute drive away we reached Gemstone Beach, a cobble & pebble beach below a windswept bluff on the Great Southern Ocean. Lots of colorful rocks, some of which are considered gemstones, have been rolled and polished in the surf for millennia. To our untrained eyes they just look like a bunch of rocks, pretty rocks anyway!
There are ‘warning-private property’ signs on the bluff, but you can’t see the house until you are down on the beach because it is built into the bluff, looking out across the beach. The panorama is kind of weird because google photos put it together from several of my pictures! It looks like a tsunami is coming!
We started back towards Riverton, stopping at several more beaches as the clouds came and went. Our next stop was Monkey Island, a tiny island rising out of the surf very close to shore along a sandy stretch of beach that reaches Gemstone beach around the curve of the bay. No monkeys, but you can reach the island at low tide. The Maori in the area used the island as a lookout for whales back in the day. The Pakeha shore whalers did the same, and named the island for the ‘monkey winch’ that was used to haul boats ashore. We visited at high tide so we didn’t get onto the island.
I did find several pieces of sea glass in the rocks here.
The next stops were a tiny un-named beach near Cosy Nook, and then Cosy Nook itself, also pretty tiny.
The small cribs or baches were homes for fishermen who kept their boats here. Now they are holiday houses and the fishermen have moved to Riverton.
As we headed home we saw this penguin gathering in front of a farm. We have no idea why or what for, but it’s cute!
If you look past the penguins on the left you can see 2 giant pigs. We haven’t seen many pigs on farms, mostly sheep and cattle.
My haul of pretty rocks and sea glass from our day at the beaches! I left them on the picnic table at the B&B.