Horowhenua District | Brightchic Photography: Day Trips For The Uninspired, New Zealand

Gina and I enjoy going to the beach anytime of year, you see things in winter that you don’t see in summer and vice versa. We visited Hokio Beach in July 2014, it was fine but quite cold and windy. Good day for thermals and a woolly hat.

Hokio Beach is situated just outside of the Levin township. Upon arriving there, I saw two shags perched in a tree, I quickly grabbed my cameras and headed off, leaving Gina to sort the car and grab her gear.

After I photographed the shags we made our way down to the beach, the sand was being blown around by the wind and it created a haze effect. The wind eventually died down a bit, as we walked along the beach.

At one stage there was hardly any clouds covering the sun and just for a short time, the winter sunlight turned the ocean a silver colour.

While the wind made interesting patterns around the shells lying on the beach, some of the shells looked like they were sitting on little stalks made of sand.

Gina and I saw quite a few different bird species, while we were there on the beach and around the waterways, Shags, Ducks, Pukeko, Gulls, Oystercatchers and Swallows were there in good numbers.

After we spent a couple or so hours walking along Hokio Beach, we decided to head for home. On the way back into Levin we stopped to look at the snow-covered ranges in the distance and of course to take photos.

All in all another good day out.

view from where we parked the car for a while

Ocean turned a silver colour by the winter sunlight

Gina and I have visited the Manawatu Estuary and Foxton Beach on a few occasions, at different times of the year. It takes about an hour to get there from Woodville and even less time from Palmerston North. Both locations are in close proximity to each other, so they make for a great day trip out. Directions on how to get there can be found, if you click on the links above.

The Manawatu Estuary is a wetland of international importance and 93 species of birds have been identified there. We have personally seen, Royal spoonbills, Black swans, Pukeko, Pied stilts, Variable oystercatchers and White fronted terns, just to name a few. So if you are an avid bird watcher this is the place for you.

Foxton Beach, like all beaches is a great place to visit winter or summer as there is always something different to see. Gina and I don’t need any excuse to go to the beach, problem is, we don’t get there often enough.

On a whim, our last trip was in the evening, to watch the sunset, something we haven’t done before. So armed with a torch and cameras we set of, we arrived with minutes to spare and we were rewarded with an amazing sunset.

The torch came in handy though, as it went dark rather quickly and seeing as there is a lot of driftwood on the beach, it helps, if you can see where you are going.

I think we were the only two people left on the beach that night. So after wandering around on the beach for a while in the dark, with the torch, we decided it was probably a good idea to head home.