Karitane, Waikouaiti, Hampden

After our quiet night overlooking the estuary at the Warrington Beach POP we walked down to the ocean beach, 

Wide Warrington sandy beach.

where there were lots of freedom campers and bus loads of school students doing activities, before continuing north on the scenic Coastal Road, past Seacliffe, to Karitane, a spot we fell in love with on our travels 6 years ago.

The road is rather bumpy and windy with lots of railway crossings but it's a good scenic trip especially with it being a sunny, although hazy, day. Karitane has the sea on one side and the Waikouaiti river around the headland on the other. 

Waikouaiti river mouth - T has positive feeling that I'll catch a fish here!

It looked like the fishing might be good off the wharf and being close to low tide Len tried both his spinner and squid bait along with several other hopefuls. 

I have a negative feeling at this point!

Only one kahawai caught and that was by a lucky local fisherman who considered that the river is a bit dirty at present. Nil to everyone else!

Never mind I have some salmon in the fridge!

The NZMCA CAP site at the Waikouaiti Beach Camp was our stopover for the night. Just $10 for members which allowed us to use the dump station but no other facilities. The camp was quiet with about 4-5 other members in our area and not many in the main camp although there were many unoccupied caravans. We had to be careful in our area to keep to the edges as the ground gets boggy. People would have had fun watching us park as, having decided that we wanted to get TV, we moved 4 times before being successful!

Waikouaiti beach. 

After settling we had a walk down through the trees to the beach and along it - a beautiful spot but not hot enough to tempt us to swim.

The next morning we emptied the tanks and filled up with water which had such a horrible taste that we soon had to empty our bottles of that drinking water - luckily we still had some good drinking water on board.

A gentle saunter beckons!

We then drove around to the Hawksbury Lagoon which is a wildlife refuge for large numbers of different birds although breeding numbers are very low due to lack of safe nesting areas.

Some beautiful bird's rest at this lagoon!

Trish off track again!

The lagoon itself is very shallow, being only half a metre deep, and they are having difficulty improving the water quality meaning that it can be smelly but there were no odours today and it was a peaceful walk around the pools and crossing the causeways for probably a bit over an hour.

Waikouaiti beach looking north. 

Waikouaiti beach looking south.

We had a coffee overlooking the very blue sea before setting off for Hampden, passing the handful of shops on the main road at Waikouaiti and stopping for a wee walk through little Palmerston, where there is a very high hill to the east with the Puketapu monument on top, before turning off to Shag Point, thinking of the possibility of fishing.

Shag Head - a good find!

Once we arrived at the end of the fairly narrow road however we soon realised that it is a very popular spot for tourists to view the huge fur seals which are either lazing on the rocks below or frolicking virtually in one spot in the water.

What a stressless life looks like!

An unexpected good find!

By later afternoon we arrived in little Hampden having passed the turn off to the Moeraki Boulders which we have visited a couple of times before. We are now parked out the back of the Hampden Tavern, a free spot for NZMCA members, but we'll treat ourselves to some fish and chips for dinner in the Tavern as some kind of payment.