New Zealand: Matapouri

I took so many pictures on our 2017 trip to New Zealand that I never got the chance to show a lot of them here, especially because we bounded off on a couple of other big scenic trips last year. Over the next four weeks I’ll make amends and fill in some of the gaps with more than two dozen posts. While most of the photographs will show things for the first time, in a few cases you’ll see a different take on a place or thing that appeared here last year.

On the way from the Auckland Airport to Paihia a year ago today (going by the calendar and ignoring the time difference between Texas and New Zealand), we detoured over to Matapouri on the east coast of the North Island so we could get our first good look at the ocean on this new adventure.

At one point I noticed a young gull hunched down on the sand. As I slowly approached, the bird flopped around a little but didn’t fly away. It was injured, as you can see here. Fortunately for it, I wasn’t a dog, cat, ferret, weasel, or stoat. Ah, the benignity of the nature photographer.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman