Island Bay comment

After a trying day I set off in search of calm. And somewhere cooler than the house which has the thermal qualities of a greenhouse.
There can be few better spots to take your bag of kumara fries (that’s sweet potato to the uninitiated - huge improvement on the “potato” kind, as they are sweetish, slightly caramelised and full of beta carotene ) than Island Bay at sunset.
South Island in clear view again – see photo. And it was all rather photogenic. Hard to choose which shot to share with you.
Island Bay is part of the Wellington Coast Marine Reserve – a new reserve which was negotiated at huge length (years and years) with the local Iwi (Maori Tribes) who traditionally have rights to harvest sea food. We had an interesting perspective on this while visiting Mt Manganui (further north) where you can see enormous middens of clam shells cast aside by generations long gone.
To get the reservedness of it in perspective – our mate M. saw a whole pod of Orca in the bay, yes actually between the Island and the beach, last year. On a much smaller scale this evening the tide was low, the water was wine clear and I could see teeming sea life: tiny fish, anemones and small starfish (think Finding Nemo and you’ll get the idea). Curiously the kind of creatures I have not seen in coastal pools over here are the shrimps and prawns that were such a common feature of my childhood on the South Wales coast. Although there are Crayfish – and a very fine one we had on Saturday courtesy of Uncle Dave from Wanganui.