Byddi Lee's Blog, page 18

Bay of Islands - My Personal Favorite

The North and South Islands of New Zealand are often compared, many people claiming the South Island is better, but I beg to differ. True the scenery is spectacular on the South Island, but that can be said of the North Island too. For me, the North Island offers more variety. You can hike, bike and kayak as much on the North Island as you can on the South Island, but with volcanoes thrown in. There's more culture in the North Island too and the ocean is warmer.

Our destination was the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland. There is a lot to see and do up here. You can dive the Rainbow Warrior, drive up 90 miles beach, slide down sand dunes, see where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific ocean at New Zealand's northern most tip. I'd done all that last time - this time I was here to relax. It was our last stop on an amazing 7 week odyssey that circled a huge portion of the Pacific Ocean. We needed the rest.

We stayed for three nights in Paihia at the Beachfront Pacific. It was on the edge of town, right across the road from the beach.

The beach felt like a private one, it was so empty - except for one late afternoon when we came across a dozen Irish lads. I knew they were Irish immediately because two were playing hurling on the beach while the rest of them cooled off their sun burn by standing waist deep in the water, chatting, laughing and at one point even singing! Gotta love the Irish lads!

But aside from the odd Irish invasion, we had the place pretty much to ourselves, though the locals were very friendly. This guy was a rescue dog - as in "search and rescue" and he loved to play on the beach with pretty much anyone who would join in.

  He soon had My Husband well trained at throwing the the stick!
We'd been promising ourselves a helicopter ride and this was the place to take one - out to see the "Hole in the Rock." I'd been out before on the R. Tucker Thomson when I'd visited in 2003, but to see the Bay of Island from a helicopter was a real treat.
In the photo above you can see where the recent rains has washed sediment into the blue waters near Paihia but not reaching the town of Russell, across the bay.
Further out the water is clear turquoise.
You could see so much from the air - even this gigantic shoal of fish was so clear.
I felt like a spy intruding on yachts moored off secluded beaches
That didn't stop me from zooming my camera in for a closer look!
And the Hole in the Rock - spectacular!
The following day, inspired by all we had seen we took a  boat out to Otehei Bay where I found my Goldilocks Spot - the air temperature not to cool not to hot, the sea the perfect temperature for swimming...
And this view to sustain me when far from the ocean in a drought stricken land.

Sweet perfection!

Byddi Lee

The Amazing Coromandel, North Island, New Zealand

The Coromandel Peninsula is where the New Zealanders go on vacation. It's not to far from Auckland and the coastline is spectacular.

To get there from Rotarua we had to drive through Middle Earth! You can stop and do some Hobbit Tours etc. but it's not our thing so that whole aspect of New Zealand is lost on us.

Instead, for our en-route adventure, we choose to visit Wairere Falls, a 45 minute walk each way, steep uphill to get there but really worth it.

It was a little disconcerting that the river had flooded onto the trail. "Flash flood" whispered in the back of my mind. If the rain had come on we'd have scarpered out of there straight away.
The river was running at full spate - hardly surprising given the amount of rain we'd had.
Along the way, there were pretty mini falls. Each one had us wondering, "Is this it?"
But the trail is a full 45 minutes long (unless you are a super athlete). Anything you come to before that is simply an appetizer for the main event which you will know you've come to as soon as you see it. You hear the thundering of the water first.
It's nice because it feels remote. There isn't a throng of tourists pushing to get that perfect shot.

Unlike our next stop - Cathedral Cove. It's a 1.5 hr easy walk, but finding somewhere to park at the trail-head can be challenge due to sheer numbers of tourists. The trail to the cove feels like walking to a football match or concert - there's so many people. The upside was that we had good craic with the people around us. The trail was very muddy in places and those wearing flipflops provided entertainment for the rest of us! Everyone was in good humor and it was a fun encounter.

Cathedral Cove is beautiful, if crowded.

The caves and rock formations are massive and very impressive, so the tourist draw is pretty obvious.

It had been a pretty full day of hiking and by the time we pulled into Coromandel town, to stop for the night, the sun was staining the ocean pink.
The town was delightful with lots of lovely accommodation and restaurant choices. Again, I could have stayed here longer, but the next morning we would be up and out on the road first thing. Such is New Zealand - enough is never enough!

Byddi Lee

Holiday Towns in the Rain

Chris de Burgh said it best in his song Fatal Hesitation when he sang,
♫ There's nothing quite like an out of season holiday town,
    In the rain, ♫
The weather in Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand was awful for our entire two night stay. The lake looked like it might even overflow! This area is the Geothermal capital of New Zealand. There are countless geysers, boiling mud puddles and hot springs all over the town and throughout the extended area. Some of these are free to visit, some are bathable, others are off limits for safety reasons and many have been commandeered as spa resorts by commercial businesses. If you are into exploding water in any shape for form this is the town for you.
We sucked up the bad weather and donned our rain gear to explore the area. The mud pools in the local geothermal park still plopped and bubbled away.
The signs warned us to stay out of the pools.
  But the pools broke the contract by flooding the bridges and walkways!

Despite the weather, this town had a lot going for it. Our hotel room in the Rotvegas Motel had a private Jacuzzi tub. The water was heated geothermally so I didn't feel guilty using all that hot water. Being "wasteful" of water was really a treat for someone living through the recent Californian Drought.
We also visited the mud baths at Hell's Gate for an affordable and fun spa experience. I don't have any photo's, but I would encourage you to hop over to their site. If you only do one thing in Rotarua it should be this!

This stop was a mud bathing, tub dwelling, movie in hotel room lazy kind of interlude - much needed in the midst of all our travels.

Byddi Lee

Rain Stops Play

So far on our trip in New Zealand we'd only spent one night in each place (apart from Christchurch.) In the North Island we decided to change that and to stay in fewer spots for longer. This meant that we'd not get to visit the Eastern Cape, but we were reconciled to that.

I'd pre-booked all of our accommodation with Hotels.com before we'd left for Hong Kong in February. I was able to change all but one of these bookings. We were bound for Ohiwa on the Bay of Plenty, near Whakatane (pronounced Fuk-a-tan-nee!) whether we liked it or not!

Whakatane is claimed to be the sunniest place in New Zealand. It is also the departure point for the boat trip out to White Island - an active volcano in the ocean. The trip costs NZ$199 each but we're such geo-nerds we decide to splash out - no pun intended!

The accommodation - the Ohiwa Beach Holiday Park was a little off the beaten track and on the opposite side of  a large lagoon from Whakantane.
The coastline had intrigued me when I was first researching this area as a stop-over. I've always  loved to pour over maps and try to imagine what the place looks like. It's even better when you can actually go there! Google maps has only served to fuel my obsession with travel.

The Holiday Park itself had very little going on. The sea was very rough - still roiling after that storm that had flooded Franz Josef the week before, and the beach was covered in a very high tide. There was nowhere to buy food. We had to go to the next town about 15 minutes drive away to find food to cook up in our self catering unit. While we were in good cellphone coverage territory we got a text message. Our trip the following day to White Island was cancelled because of bad weather. Ironic really since we'd been in New Zealand's rainiest place - Doubtful Sound and had had clear blue skies. Now in the sunniest place we had rain and storms!

We greeted this text with a mixture of disappointment - we may never have this opportunity again - and relief - it was stretching our budget a bit.

By the time we'd shopped for supplies,the sun had begun to slide toward the horizon. When we reached the lagoon the world was bathed in golden light and this was the sight that met us.
We pulled over and grabbed the cameras.
The protected lagoon belied the angry waters out to sea. We soaked in the peace.
Sure this stop had not worked out as we'd planned, and we'd resented the Holiday Park for not allowing us to cancel, but in this moment it all came together. We sat, just the two of us, drinking in the tranquility of this spot as if it were a fortifying tonic.
Suddenly a loud plop in the water, then another and another. Fish were jumping all over the lagoon. We even caught one in action - not an easy thing to do.
We must have spent an hour there watching the light show of the dying sun and listening to the lap of the water and the kerplick of landing fish. It was amazing, free and unexpected.
It made me realize, not for the first time, that there is magic in every moment, tucked away in every corner, if you just take the time to find it.
Jupiter and the moon
Byddi Lee

Playing on Super Volcanoes

Taupo Lake is the caldera of a super volcano. It has produced two of the world’s most violent eruptions in  recent times, geologically speaking. It tends to go off every 900 or so years, yet hasn't done so in 1700 years soooo ... yep .... looking a little overdue there buddy!

It may not be as big as Yellowstone. It's eruption would likely to be more of a national catastrophe as compared to the annihilatingly global cataclysm that Yellowstone would be, but still, I wouldn't want to be hanging around there when it blows!

However, now that we were here we were determined to make the best of things - not a hardship since we had a beautiful lake to play on and the locals were so friendly when we'd ask for directions!

We decided to go to see the Maori Rock carvings, only accessible by boat or air. 

We choose to sail out on the Barbary yacht. At $40 each for the afternoon it was the best value for money of any excursion we had in New Zealand and one of my favorites.

The weather was beautiful. The wind would take us straight to where we wanted to go. 

I was intrigued as to how we'd get back - it's not like the wind would conveniently change direction for us. Although I knew the physics of tacking and could draw out the vectors of the forces involved on a piece of graph paper, as I'd done for A-level maths and physics, I'd never seen it in practice and secretly didn't believe it would work! Sort of like how you can't believe you can make water boil in an paper envelope held over a candle until you actually do it!

Made in the 1970's, the Maori rock carvings aeren't ancient or anything (though my nephews would say that was ancient!) but they were big (10m high) and beautiful and that was good enough to attract tourists.


On our way back the wind didn't change direction and the tacking proved to be a very long winded (pun intended) way to travel back (and forth and back and forth) across the bay until the Skipper, a very witty and entertaining chap, decided we had enough of sailing and switched on the motor - Understandably, since he needed to get back by a certain time to take out the next tour. But a cocky little devil in the back of my head kicked back, folded its arms and said with a wink and a smug smile, "Told ya it wouldn't work!"

Byddi Lee

Does the Nocturnal Bird Catch the Glow Worm?

It's a one hour flight from Christchurch to Auckland in the North Island. Waitomo is only two hours south of Auckland by car so we were able to comfortably push on through to Waitamo without having to spend a night in Auckland.

We stayed in the delightful Waitomo Caves Hotel and soaked in the charm of the lavish yet somewhat jaded decor that spoke of an older era, whilst trying to push The Shining to the back of our minds!

No need to worry though.
The hotel had a warm, welcoming atmosphere, with friendly staff and a great restaurant.

The waitress took time out to chat with us. She was a local Maori woman and her insights to the area and local life were interesting and much appreciated.

Next morning, we spent some time at the Otorohanga Kiwi House.
They have more than just kiwis, such as this Kingfisher.

We were able to watch feeding time for this cute Kea. These adorable parakeets, the Red-Crowned Kakariki, were so entertaining.
But my favorite was Kevin the Kiwi!
It's hard to determine if he's a Brown, Little Spotted or Great Spotted Kiwi from this photo. Trust me, he's there, but what do you expect what with trying to photograph a nocturnal bird in the dark?

The afternoon was spend below ground despite the gorgeous scenery above.
We were visiting glow worms caves. We'd seen glow worms already on our trip but years ago on my first visit I'd been blown away by these cave tours and I wanted to share that with My Husband.

There are many tours available. The cheapest tour is about NZ$50, but if you can budget for it, I highly recommend the trip run by Spellbound Tours for NZ$75. The groups are smaller, the tour is longer and you feel like you are having a private tour of the caves because they take you to a different, less busy section. Our tour guide was one of the cavers who had first explored the cave system. His stories about how he and his friends had set up the first tours and developed the pathways were great. He totally plugged into our geek-factor on the science and technology behind it all.

The tour begin with a walk through the caves. We were all given helmets and head lamps. At various points we were instructed to turn off the lights to feel the developing darkness that only underground caves can offer.

Then in one cave little pin-pricks of light showed up.

These were the start of the glow worms...just the start... Now, I know this is nearly as good as my "Kevin the Kiwi" picture but bear with me - it gets better!

Here's what they looked like with the lights on.

And from another angle you can see the sticky threads with which they capture their prey.
We then came to an underground river. We boarded the awaiting boat and were instructed to turn off our head lamps.
Photo courtesy of Spellbound ToursAbove us the ceiling twinkled with millions of tiny lights which were reflected in the water giving the impression that we were floating through stars.
Photo courtesy of Spellbound ToursIt was amazing. To complete the zen of the experience we were asked not to talk or use any photography at all. Free of charge, the company provided us with a set of stunning photographs of what we were seeing.
Photo courtesy of Spellbound Tours
They gave me permission to use them in the blog - good job too because I am running out of words like amazing, spectacular, magical, stunning... to describe what that experience was like. It was like being in another dimension, floating along in that boat, holding My Husbands hand and devouring this visual feast.
Photo courtesy of Spellbound ToursWhen we were allowed to turn our camera on again, we did manage to snag a few nice shots ourselves.
We came across the remains of a goat. It may have stumbled in from outside to die.
Other strange bones were too far in for that to be the cause of death. This fatality may have been the result of the animal falling in through a pothole.
The picture above shows bones from a Moa - a giant flightless bird which is now extinct.

This toe is about six inches long.
The Spellbound tour truly lived up to its name. We had a great time with these guys and would urge fellow travelers to this area to look them up.

I've visited caves all over the world and these are the most unique, interesting and bewitching of them all.

Byddi Lee

Christchurch Five Years After the Quake

The road along the north east coast of the south Island runs most of the way right alongside the beach. We gazed for several hours at a palette of fresh blues and turquoises, each twist in the road bringing forth more exclamations of how gorgeous it was.

At one point we stopped to get out and take pictures. We were out of the car and overlooking a small cliff-like drop of about a dozen feet when I noticed fur seals on the rocks - a whole colony of them in their hundreds, stretching all along the coastline.
Even more exciting, they had babies and many were suckling.

It seems we had discovered the Kaikoura Seal Colony. After hanging out here for a while we set off again for Christchurch.

It was with some amusement that we ended up in Belfast first!
You can walk and cycle on the Belfast road (perhaps on your way to the cemete...ry? I guess...)
Belfast seems so out of place besides the exotic names of the South Pacific!
For our two night stop in Christchurch we stayed in a gorgeous one bed-roomed apartment in The West Fitzroy apartment complex on the Armagh Road! It really was a home from home.

Part of our motivation for staying in Christchurch was to find out how it was recovering after the big earthquake in February 2011 and to support the regrowth of the city.


I'd been hoping to write an uplifting post about how the people of Christchurch had inspired me with their fortitude. Sadly that wasn't the case. Instead, I only saw a sad city embroiled in petty politics and in-fighting that resulted in a stalemate, halting any progress beyond the "make-do" arrangements they'd put in place immediately after the quake. Insurance companies were refusing to pay out and people were understandably frustrated that their city was now suffocating in a quagmire of red tape and bureaucracy.

At least this was the impression we got when we took the city tour. The tour guide and a couple of locals on the tour (they were hoping to become guides) did nothing but bicker with each other about the decisions that had been made and sniped at the politics behind it. It created a nasty atmosphere in my opinion. Perhaps, we'd just been unlucky to have that perspective thrust upon us, but it certainly tainted my view of the city.

If this was how a "first world" country coped with the aftermath of such devastation, what hope was there for less wealthy places like Haiti, Mexico and Nepal? I have not visited any of these and so have nothing to compare it with. I wonder if perhaps not having insurance and red tape allows you to forge ahead and fix the place up.

They still had the Re:Start Container Mall in place. An ingenious use of cargo containers that was intended  to tide them over until the rebuild. They are all still there and threatening to become a permanent fixture.
The destruction of the Christchurch Cathedral seemed to really knock the city sideways. Especially tragic because the scaffolding that was shoring up the building after the earthquake in 2010, fell and took out so much of the building during the February 2011 quake.
 Our tour guide made no secret of the fact she abhorred the Transition Cathedral.
 It's base was constructed from containers which were used as offices and meeting rooms.
The huge cylinders holding up the roof were made from huge rolls of cardboard, hence the nick name the "Cardboard Cathedral." We'd been really looking forward to seeing this, but our guide's obvious disgust at the building put us off asking our usual nerdy questions... it was a case of shut up and put up... a lesson I reckon our guide could have used.
Some buildings had been beautifully restored - like these university buildings.

However, it was more common to see many derelict and abandoned buildings.
 The graffiti added a dystopian feel to it all.
Some still needed structural support and weren't safe to enter.
One sector of town had been beautifully rebuilt, but I switched off as the guide began to recount some gripe with the developers "doing it wrong" - which was silly of me because now I can't present a measured discussion myself... But it's a picture of nice buildings in Christchurch.
By far the most poignant sight in Christchurch is the simple but effective White Chair Memorial.

185 white chairs sit on a lot in the city. Each chair represents a person who died in the earthquake. The variety of the chairs, some high chairs and baby seats, shows the uniqueness of each life lost - death is not choosy. The earthquake did not discriminate.



This haunting reminder put it all in perspective for me. The city will recover physically. People will get past their anger and frustration, but those who lost loved ones will never forget, and rightly so.

Byddi Lee

Just One Click Away

I'm as far from being a soccer fan as you can get. I just don't have the patience for it, but during Euro16 I have become a fan of the Irish Fans!

It started when I saw hundreds of them cheer for the Random French Guy on his balcony. Or perhaps it was when they sang "Dancing Queen" with the Swedish supporters. It was definitely after I read about the disgusting fighting by fans from other countries (you know who I mean without me naming them!)

Long before the Irish Fans began changing tires for the elderly, praying with nuns on trains, picking up litter and singing lullabies (of a fashion!) to French babies, I was already proud of the Green Army. Such great ambassadors for Ireland. The only sad thing about it is that people being decent to each other at sporting events was such a News-worthy item!

That said, you do have the nay-sayers - I'm not talking about the hilarious spoof article about how the Irish fans are just going out of their way to be nice as a way to show up the English fans! But I have seen some serious comments that disparaged the fans because they were just there for the party - Well, yes "Hello! Dah!"and whats wrong with that?  Or comments that claimed that the fans in France weren't real football fans because they didn't go to local club's matches during the rest of the season (or some such gripe that I honesty don't really get.) So these guys have a life - good for them!

Bottom line, they are spreading good will and good humor to the extent that the first thing I do when I hook into the internet over breakfast now is check up how things are going. I have become a convert to the cause. I want Ireland to stay in the tournament for a long as possible because those fans who had traveled to France deserve to stay and support their team. Yes - I even worried if we'd - see I say "we'd" cos I'm Irish and my team is in Euro16 - make it through to the next round. I cried tears of joy when Ireland scored a winning goal against Italy. Yes, I have allowed myself to be swept along in the tide of emotion surrounding this competition, and I like it!

Having your country represented in an international competition is something to sing about and the Irish Fans know how to do that.

But as I was reading through the various news articles, another non-Euro item at the bottom of the page caught my eye. It was about how refugees fleeing Boko Haram are starving to death in their hundreds.

One click away...

My happy heart skidded to a sideways stop then beat with sadness for these poor people.

One click away...

From joy and jubilation was terror and unspeakable horror.

One click away...

I was imagining what it must feel like to not only starve but watch those you love suffer the same and be powerless to stop it. It bent my mind to try to take this in. Do I turn a blind eye? Do I click back...just one click... and ignore it?

What can I do? One person in this storm of hatred and cruelty? I am no-one. I can do nothing.

I felt ashamed of the frivolities of indulging (albeit by proxy) in something as trivial as football. I was disgusted at myself for letting the kick of a ball matter to me when the world is full of hurt and nastiness. And not just on the other side of the planet. Even here in the country that I am currently residing, people dying needlessly from violence. In my city, homelessness and poverty. In my neighborhood, most likely, someone is suffering from domestic violence...

One click away there is a hard, cruel world out there.

For the rest of the day, I felt morose and depressed. How do I make the world a better place when it is so messed up? By laughing at stupid stuff, do I make it worse? Then I realized that my lack of laughter, my lack of joy wasn't changing anything. It was okay to celebrate the joys that life offers.

One click away, I read a piece about how happy the French were to have the Irish Fans in Paris, how it livened up a city that had become morose since the attacks there last November.

And then I realized that this is how we beat terror. We sing with joy. We dance. We show goodness to our fellow human beings. These "frivolities" are what keep us human. These types of celebrations of joy and humanity hold us back from the black abyss of hopelessness.

Yes, I am the lucky one who can indulge in this. Yes, one click away is someone struggling with something terrible. For that I am soulfully sorry. For them, I mourn. I pray I never have to face their trials. There are few, if any, words that don't sound trite, and less that will fix the world.

But it is okay to be happy when you can be. It is okay to celebrate when there's cause to, and it is fine to be proud of a crowd of drunken eejits who put smiles on everyone's faces...so long as we don't lose sight of the suffering of others.

Because one click away there is evil in the world and joy is our first line of defense.



Byddi Lee

Sparking Moments of Magic

When I look at a map of New Zealand, I imagine that the South and North Islands have been torn apart. The northernmost tip of the sound Island looks like it's fraying. The coastline line here is so recursively folded in upon itself that it's nearly impossible to trace a route out to sea from some of the deepest recesses of the Sounds. It's a bit like those mazes you got in kid's activities books - find the path from A to B!


Some accommodations in this part of New Zealand are only accessible by float plane.  I wish I were telling you about how we took a float plane to one such location, but neither time nor budget permitted that. Instead, we went to the moderately more accessible Anikiwa, a tiny little gathering of homes on the edge of the deepest tip of the Queen Charlotte Sound. We stayed in a delightful place called Anakiwa 401. This place is like a back-packers for grown ups in that it had the communal kitchen like you'd share in a back packers, but we had our own en-suite and access to our room from outside. The decor was charming, as were the owners and their fur family! To top it all off, we lucked out and were the only ones staying that night, so we basically had the run of the place.

The accommodation was across the road from the Anakiwa jetty. 
It is also where the Queen Charlotte Track ends too.

Our hosts were very informative about the area. They told us where to go to see glow worms (for free) - It's top secret, so I can't tell you where to go, but if you stay at the 401, they'll divulge all.

Anyways the directions were simple enough, culminating in the instruction to "stop just before the bridge and simply turn off your torches."

I'd seen glow worms before and knew how amazing they were, but My Husband took some persuading especially since we had to go at night, in the dark. It wasn't that he was afraid. He says it's because I was such a jittery-bug and jumped at every little noise which then set his nerves on edge. But off we went... and when the moment came to switch out the lights were we plunged into darkness ... until these little tiny lights appeared all around us, twinkling like close-up stars
Glow worms are actually the larval stage of a type of fly that dangles sticky threads. Their light attracts flying insects that get stuck in the treads. The larvae then reel 'em in and scoff 'em!
Our hosts had also tipped us off to the fact that the sea water had phosphorescence. I'd also seen this phenomena before. My Husband hadn't. so I felt like a sorceress weaving magic as I marched to the end of the jetty with a stick in my hand.
I stirred the water and sure enough, it sparkled with phosphorescence! I splashed the water some more and felt like I was casting magic into the ocean. My imagination then took a u-turn and fed my brain with images of creatures rushing up from the deep and swallowing my arm! Enough magic for one dark evening.

Next morning, we reluctantly had to move on again. As we left we could see our host out water skiing - what a life!
As we drove closer to Picton, where the ferry from the North Island arrives we stopped to look at the view. A delicious smell of fragrant wood filled the air.
We realized, on close inspection, that we were overlooking a lumber yard in the distance, yet it still looked pretty!
We passed Picton and headed south for Christchurch. The scenery changed again so that in the blink of an eye we felt like we'd driven straight into California!
New Zealand is full of magic and surprise!

Byddi Lee

Over The Hill

If I could spend a week in one place in New Zealand, Abel Tasman National Park is where I'd choose to spend that time. Situated at the north western corner of the South Island, it is a beautiful coastal paradise. Last time I visited this park, I kayaked at Kaiteriteri. Here you'll find the iconic Split Apple Rock - a Kodak moment if ever there was one!

This time I wanted to venture deeper into the park, to see what was on "the other side" at Golden Bay. It wasn't hard to see where the name came from! 
To get here we had to travel "Over The Hill" on a heart-stoppingly winding road, with steep drop-offs. The view from the top was pretty epic.  The alarming warning sign bothered me...
... not the skidding per say - more the fact that it's physically impossible for any car to make skid marks in this shape. It really buzzed my OCD!


We stayed in Pohara, in another beautiful, self-contained cottage over looking the bay at the Pohara Beachfront Motel.
We'd brought our own food since the place was so remote and cooked in the cottage. A walk on the beach and early to bed - a beautifully relaxing evening.

Abel Tasman Park only has one road that we could take our rental car on...
 ...and even that was iffy!

With more time you could hike or water taxi this area. I'd love to have had more time to explore the golden beaches,
...the little harbors
...and simply kick back and watch life go by - such as this bird collecting materials for its nest, I presume. Unless it was just tidying up the beach!
And even in this remotest of remote spots...joy of joys - a coffee shop!
Great coffee, a spectacular view and the best of company...
Being "Over The Hill" certainly has its perks!

Byddi Lee