Out of curiosity built from driving past the access road a few times in our travels and a desire to check out the more obscure locations around NZ, we took the camping gear for an overnight trip to an area known as French Pass. There's a popular Department of Conservation campground there with about 20 campsites that we booked for our visit. It turns out that you can't argue with the scenery . . .
The paved part of the road in to French Pass . . .
Mussel Farms visible from the road along many bays in the area.
Treats left for us on the road?????? Not sure if it's waste spilled from a caravan or a cow on the run . . . .
This second shot is definitely cow material.
The unpaved road on the way into French Pass . . .
The lookout - watching for dolphins etc - only saw seabirds today!
The beach at the campsite - lots of boats tied up near the wharf, we felt kind of left out without a boat as that's the major pastime here.
But we made do with eating our meals here at the beach as there were wall-to-wall tents in the campground. Hardly any of the campgrounds here have divided sites with shrubery etc., it's just an open piece of grass field. Not very romantic, but the scenery makes up for it.
The actual
French Pass is shown below with the lighthouse markers to indicate the
deepest channel through the turbulent waters. A tricky place for ships
navigating this narrow channel in the 1800's as water levels and flow
change quite a bit with the tides.
We found a lovely beach after hiking down from the roadway, it was all fine and good until about 10 minutes before sunset when I finally convinced the boys that we really needed to head back up the steep and lengthy trail back to the top before we ran out of daylight! But with rocks to climb and jellyfish and starfish to study who can blame them?
Off we headed the next morning, short and sweet, although many of the campers around us were staying for a week or two - someone had even brought up their potplants, 3 room canvas tents and a what resembled a washing machine! LOL
One last "treasure", Daddy found this little blue penguin flipper at Okiwi Bay during our pitstop and playground visit on the way home. Yes, this one actually came home with us, and Dave keeps making the boys look for a little blue penguin who's swimming around the ocean in circles.
