Visiting Whangaroa Harbour

New Zealand is full of beautiful and quaint little settlements and villages.  On our travels, we are hoping to explore as many of these small towns as we can.

One such little village is Whangaroa Harbour.  For our many overseas friends and family, Whangaroa is pronounced "Fun-ga-row-ha).

The name comes from a lament Whaingaroa or "what a long wait" of a woman whose warrior husband had left for a foray to the south.

Whangaroa Harbour is a surprisingly small but beautiful harbour settlement, popular as a deep-sea fishing spot with a beautiful small harbour on one side of the road that leads into the town and rocky cliffs and land on the other side.

The charm of this really small town is it's remoteness as you have to take a scenic detour to get there and there is only one road into and out of the village.
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As we entered the town the beautiful bay and harbour grabs your attention immediately.

At the entrance to this small town is this welcoming sign with the following words "Te Wahapu O Whangaroa" which translated means the door to Whangaro and with that simple yet effective entrance sign is a lovely sneak peak of the beautiful harbour.

 Then a little further on, we saw the lovely harbour views:

Now from Tauranga Bay we can only see the entrance to the bay of Whangaroa Harbour in the distance, but we were treated to the most beautiful morning rolling mists flowing out of the bay and over hills .

Almost like a visual of the lament of the woman of Whangaroa waiting for her warrior to return ..... she waits in the shrouded dawn of the day ..... waiting ..... but when the mist clears there is only sea and hills .....

Be curious, you never know what is around the corner

I have often told that I am far too curious and nosy for my own good.  Yes I am, I won't deny it.

I have always been curious from even when I was a little girl.  From an early age I have always wanted to know the 'why", "how", "where" and 'when" of everything I read, saw and explored.  I was fascinated about everything that made up my world and loved getting the bigger picture of events, things and life itself.

And I still do!

Good and honest curiosity in itself is a good thing;  it feeds your imagination and creativity and makes life far more interesting and exciting.

So ..... of course, being true to my curious self, I started to wonder what was around the rocky corner at the end of the bay.

Here is what I found .......

Rocks and rock pools:

A small cave:

A hole in the wall:

And a secluded beach:

They say curiosity killed the cat, so don't be nosy.  Nah, I don't think curiosity killed the cat - I think ignorance did. 

If I had stayed sitting on the grass pondering my question "What is around the corner?" and did nothing, I would not have discovered these secluded wonders of nature hidden from my sight.

Walt Disney penned these famous words:  "We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

So, be curious. 

We sure love our sunsets

More sunsets!  We did warn you that another post of sunset pics was coming.....

It really does not seem to matter where you are in New Zealand, the sunsets are just amazing.  As we actually parked off on the east coast of the country I would have thought sunrises would be plentiful, but they are really scarce.   Strangely enough, it is the sunsets that constantly dazzle us.  I think it is because of all the peninsulas, spits, coves and bays that crease and wrinkle the coastline ... nothing is a straight line so there seems no separation between east and west.

So here is round number 2 of magical sunsets that we have had the privilege of witnessing so far at Tauranga Bay: