Taranaki & Sunrise

One of my favourite coastal walks is to head north from Bell Block beach and walk along under the cliffs until you get to the Waiongana river mouth. It's a low tide walk and takes about an hour to get to the Waiongana river. Near the rover, you get fantastic views of Taranaki apprearing above the breaking surf and the coastal cliffs. Typically, I also see a lot of birdlife along this section of coast and frequently see both New Zealand and banded dotterels around the Waiongana river mouth where there is a nesting site just to the norht of the river.

On Sunday, low tide was just after sunrise and so I headed off an hour before dawn hoping to get some photos of the mountain with the first touch of the sun lighting its snow clad peak.

Unfortunately, when I got to the Waiongana river at sunrise, the mountain was clouded up though I did get some nice sunrise shots with the clouds reflected in the wet sand. I hung around for a while hoping to see some dotterel and though they never appeared, when i turned to head back to Bell Block the mountain had finally cleared so I did at least get some shots of it appearing over the cliffs.