Ngarunui Beach

I think this beach is the big, popular one, given that it has a Surf Life Saving Club on it.

Some shots of the beach as I walked along the paddocks overlooking the beach.

In this set of images, you can see one reason Raglan is so popular with the surfers - the evenly spaced series of consistent waves. These waves are not all that great from a surfers standpoint (kinda small on this particular day) but if you look at the frequency (the spacing between the waves' crests) you can understand. The space is consistent; this means the waves are arriving at regular intervals. Plus, the waves are looooooong. This way, most everybody gets to say, "this one's mine."

Ngarunui when the surfers don't like it, the tide is on the way out. But the receding tide revealed the wonderful black sand of the beach. Those are cabbage trees in the foreground.

Other random images from Ngarunui beach.

Lucky Cows

Immediately over Ngarunui beach are some paddocks, with probably the luckiest cows in the world, though they likely do not know it. The paddocks are part of the Wainui Reserve.

Here is a .pdf file on the Wainui Reserve Walk.

This is Raglan

This is Mount Karioi. The Maori have a delightful example of their storytelling as a history of this mountain. Karioi had a lover, Karawea. But Karewa had a roaming eye, and was attracted to Karioi's sister Pirongia, a mountain to the south. In a fit of jealousy, Karioi banished Karewa out to the ocean, and then lay down to rest. The Pakeha refer to Karewa as Gannet Island.