Our Family Trip (to the West Coast)

We took a family trip to the west coast near Auckland. You might remember this view from an earlier post. It's still beautiful there. We had a car this time, which made me think that biking here was suicidal given the type of roads. We went to Karekare, the overlook for Piha, then onto Muriwai then up to Shelley beach and then back via the North Shore.

The surf at Karekare was fun to wade in. B and P (and later A) all went in. There were some surfers nearby. We ate lunch on a hill overlooking the beach.
The beach at Muriwai seems to extend to the horizon. We were headed to a gannet colony just below P here.
The gannet colony started out on an island nearby but over time they expanded to the mainland and now had nests on several points. P reports that they were very stinky. The young gannets still had their downy coats and were not yet flying. Can you pick them out in the picture below?

The west coast is certainly beautiful!
Later, on the beach A and P searched for shells while B flew his kite. It was perfect weather for kite flying. We then went to a beach on the Kaipara named "Shelly" and searched for more shells.

On the way back home we tried to drive over the Harbour Bridge but it was a traffic jam as usual and so we were routed around the harbour.