Some probably go on and on about Hot Water Beach because of it’s um…, hot water and some will prefer ‘the Mount’ and probably there’ll be some shout outs for Ohope Beach out past Whakatane.
Ohope’s Beach is good, no doubt, but so are Tahunanui Beach and Ninety Mile Beach and Timaru’s Caroline Bay if you don’t mind a really long walk to get to the deep end and maybe even St Clair or St Kilda in Dunedin if you don’t mind swimming with the ice cubes or Allan’s Beach if you don’t mind swimming with the sea lions or Taylor’s Mistake near Christchurch with the surfies or Gore Bay which is pretty high on my list as a place to eat fish & chips, but not really for swimming and sand castles. Invercargill people probably all think Oreti Beach is the bee’s knees and Wellington people probably think it’s Oriental Bay. eN-Zed’s best beach, in my humble opinion, is the vast beach at Te Waewae Bay.
It’s just a wee drive out the back road from Tuatapere. The tar-sealed street that crosses the Waiau River becomes a gravel road and then that becomes a sandy track and that becomes the beach. It’s not a sun-bathing and sand castles beach, not because the sun never shines that far south (it does), but I remember Te Waewae Beach for toheroa digs and floundering expeditions (when you’re small you shouldn’t be out on the deep end of the net, but out there is where the action is, so, you know…) and sand dunes and toe-toe bushes and for bonfires on which saveloys were burnt, er cooked using a green stick that Dad had sharpened because knives are too dangerous for kids to use and served with a side salad of buttered white bread and a hefty squirt of Watties tomato sauce. And probably a cup of tea from a thermos. I don’t remember the drive home from Te Waewae because I was always asleep in the back seat of the Vauxhall and then the Zephyr and then the Belmont.
What’s your favourite beach? And why?
eN-Zed 