After my conference in Auckland I took a field trip to Tawharanui Peninsula, a place with amazing views. The peninsula is in the process of being restored to original conditions before modern changes to New Zealand. Basically, when you introduce all manner of mammals to a historically mammal-free environment like NZ, the plant and bird life is totally altered. So they decided to make this little peninsula into a kind of living museum. They fenced it off from the mainland with incredibly tough and impenetrable fencing and have done a huge effort to kill off the rats, mice, possums, hedgehogs, ferrets, stoats, and other mammals that are pests there. As a result, the bird and plant life is pretty amazing. Here are photos of the landscape:
The landscape was fantastic. Here are some photos:
Looking up through a cave on the shore
Looking out through the same cave
The caves were on the other side of this bluff.
Pohutukawa trees were gnarled and awesome. Most were blooming bright red too.
Cool lookin' seaweed.
Not hard to get to some awesome views.
It was too windy to hold my camera still for my panorama shots to line up, but you get the idea.
Too bad it was pretty cold. Otherwise I would've definitely been swimming.
I always grimace in my self-portraits while I try to figure out exactly what angle to point the thing.
Even some rain-foresty-type places.
Seems like a Flagstaff scene in the pines, within about a mile of the last shot.
I only saw NZ countryside for one day, but the city is cool too. It was enough to tell what I already knew - this is a great place to be. Maybe there will be a next time, preferably with family!
(The editor agrees!)
1 comment:
Wow, so beautiful!!
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