Red Rocks at Taputeranga Marine Reserve

Today I had a fun day exploring the Taputeranga Marine Reserve just outside of Wellington!

This morning, I walked over to The Cube (The other residence hall at Massey University) and met my friend Freya.  They were having free breakfasts for alcohol awareness or something, so we took advantage of the free food.  I also saw New Zealand TV for the first time at Freya’s flat.  The Winter Olympics were on so we watched curling for a little bit.  It wasn’t too exciting.  We don’t have a TV at our flat, so I haven’t had the chance to really see New Zealand TV yet.  Then we met Emily, from California, and set out to see the red rocks at the Taputeranga Marine Reserve.

We took the bus down to the southern end of the island.  Today was the first time I tried the bus system here.  We were dropped off at the end of our route at Island Bay, and walked along The Esplanade road to the Reserve.  It was really nice down there, there are some really cool houses that probably have awesome views of the ocean.

We got down to the reserve.  There was a road along the black-sand beach that we walked along.  There were a lot of four-wheel drive vehicles on the road too so we had to let them pass all the time.  After quite a while, we finally reached the red rock formations in the ocean.   In the winter time, the beach is supposed to be full of sea lions.  We’ll have to come back in May to see them!  It was a nice walk, there were a lot of people out on the beach, walking dogs, and riding bikes.  We turned around after the red rocks and walked along the beach for a while.  The beach was not very sandy, but instead made up of little rocks.  It hurt to walk on with bare feet after a while.  After we left the park, we stopped at a cafe called The Bach (pronounced batch). A bach is a summer beach house that a lot of New Zealand families have.  There were even a few along our walk to the red rocks in the reserve. They had just started to close when we arrived (it was only 4:30!) but they let us get muffins.  Freya even got a free one because they only had one more left!  We ate our muffins on the waterfront then headed back to Wellington city.

It was a really pretty day for a walk along the ocean!  Problem is, I forgot to put sunscreen on my legs and the back side of them are sunburned pretty bad.  Whoops!

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