Himatangi Beach

I thought the editor’s letter in this weekend’s Sunday Star Times summed things up well:

“With any luck, you’re reading this at least an hour later than usual. You’ve had a long sleep in at a bach with a bay window that looks out to the ocean. The house smells of cinnamon. And somebody else is making the coffee.”

We too followed the tradition of so many Kiwis and booked a bach for the Easter weekend up at Himatangi Beach. We took it in turns to have sleep ins. We drank lots of tea and coffee and wine and we ate cupcakes and good cheese.

Our window didn’t look out to the ocean though, on account of the fact that Himatangi has these massive great big tall sand dunes running up the length of it, blocking the view from many of the houses – but there are stunning views if you walk up to the top of the dunes.

We kicked back and well and truly relaxed for a few days. Alfie took up residence in the hammock while Molly the artist worked her way through a number of “Learn to Draw” books.

Jake and I read both the Saturday and Sunday newspapers, and went running on the beach every day. (Then came home and opened a bottle of Pinot Gris!)

We all spent hours and hours on the beach itself every day, mostly making copious numbers of sandcastles. 

It’s an unusual beach – it’s actually a public road, so theoretically we were letting our kids play on the equivalent of a 6 lane highway. But strangely it all kind of works ok - people, cars, 4WDs, motorbikes and quad bikes all seemed to co-exist quite peacefully on the sand.

We also spent a bit of time at the beach club, the tennis courts, and of course the requisite playpark where Alfie managed a bit of an accident on the flying fox and has consequently returned home with a giant fat lip.

Anyway, we really quite liked Himatangi – it's a very typical Kiwi summer settlement but it also has such a unique character and was a little bit quirky, eg our next door neighbour had a pet reindeer!

I'm pretty sure we'll be back at some point.