Work Hard, Play Hard, But Relax Calmly

The Friday before Easter (Good Friday) is a national holiday here in New Zealand. So is the day after Easter. But don’t assume it is because they are so religious, although that may have been the case way back when they first established the holidays. The editorial sections were full of comments about Jesus’ death, when in fact -- they claimed -- Christians seemed to be preoccupied with symbols of fertility Gods, chocolate eggs. New Zealanders do seem to have a fetish about chocolate. In fact they only recognize two types of candy: chocolate and lollies (all other candies). Now, where was I? Oh yes, the day before Easter. Being a national holiday, we also had the day off, since our office was closed. The first thing we did was clean our flat, but then as we were moving furniture around to vacuum under it, we started re-arranging. That took most of the morning. But, I think we like the way it is now. We do seem to have more space than we did.

After lunch we thought we would go to Murray’s Bay and see about renting a small sailboat for a couple of hours. There is a little shop there that rents canoes, kayaks, and sailboats. But when we got there, the cupboard was bare, meaning the place was closed for the holiday. Stupid me, here I thought that this being a four-day holiday, and the last holiday of the warm season (winter is just around the corner), that someone that was in business to rent boats would want to take advantage of the last big opportunity – why on earth would I think that? After all, a holiday is a holiday. Who wants to be open for business on a holiday? So, no sailboats for rent (not on a holiday).

Since we were at the Bay already, we decided to stay. We ate our picnic lunch and then went out on the reef exploring (we were there at low tide – my favorite time). As you can see, someone had a sailboat. Actually, I believe it was the shop owner. For this one was the only one we saw.

We had so much fun discovering things that we don’t get to see, except at low tide. He is a picture of a little sea urchin that I found in one of the tide pools.

While Diane went off looking for shells—shells that don’t wiggle or move, I began to focus on the small details that I usually don’t see, except when I’m really paying attention.

This is a close-up photo of the sun glistening off of the ripples in the wet sand. This particular beach had very dark sand.

Here is some type of shelled animal that attaches to the rock. Without having anything to provide a scale, you wouldn’t know that these rocks are very small and the growies on them are almost microscopic.

This picture is of some soft and flowery sea weed that also attaches to coastal rocks. Surprisingly there were almost no fishy smells.

This little feller caught my attention. It is called a bird’s eye oyster. It is a small shell about the size of a marble or a small chocolate Easter egg.

Here I really just wanted to catch the pretty little sea shell feeding off the plants.

Just like the last picture, which I would normally pass by without giving it a second thought, this picture is of a half dozen sea snails resting on a rock in a small tide pool. The sea weed is floating above them.

As you have already seen, tide pools can be so interesting and contain so much variety, if we just stop long enough to look. Here is a sea urchin attached to a rock, with small pebbles and shells scattered about.

Some pictures are just artistically fascinating. This is a picture of some rock oysters. Some of them are closed (still alive), and some have been forced open and only the half shell remains.

You’re probably getting very tired of these close-up shots. Someday when I have some time, I’ll research what all these little creatures are. But for now these are just sea bugs. These hard-shelled legless critters are about the size of a pencil eraser.

These are a different variety of sea snail. They look like little marbles. That is about how big they were. On the lower right are some rock oysters.

I was so surprised when I took the time to study these little fellers. The black colored things are very small clams. They are about the size of a lemon seed. The white stuff are the shells of dead clams that have become bleached. Both are attached to a large rock.

Again, the black things are small clams. The white shelled sea life is still without a name, as I need to do some more research before I know that they are. But name or no name, they are still interesting little guys to look at. Again, they are both permanently attached to a big rock which is under water except at low tide.

These little open cups are the hard shelled carcasses of guys in the last picture. They are very tiny, perhaps just big enough to fit a single grain of rice in each one. You will notice that some of them have a little snail living inside the cup. He just took up residence – he is safe there from other predators.

Compared to the small life we’ve been looking at, this star fish is enormous. The little guys from the list two pictures are on the right side of this picture.

Placed in my hand the star fish is relatively small. After his first and only photo op, we returned him to his tide pool.

You probably already knew that not all star fish looked alike. Here’s proof. This one has ten long legs, not five stubby ones like the other guy. I think we’ll call him Diez – Diez del Mar.

I thought you would be interested to see the underside of Diez. His mouth is in the center. I had to clean him up a little for the photo. Those hairy feelers aren’t very soft and they can really grip on to shells, rocks, and pebbles.

Before Diane would let me keep these shells, I have to confirm that nothing was living inside. (But to our surprise, after we got home Diane found a Hermit Crab living in one of our supposedly empty shells.)

A couple of times while we were there I lifted my head from the tide pools to enjoy the “bigger” picture. This was one that I thought was kind of cool looking.

After a couple of hours of exploring and discovery, we both sat down on a large rock and watched the tide come in. Within an hour all of our tide pools were back under water and our only dry escape was quickly disappearing, so we called it a day, but we didn’t really miss the sail boat – we had fun anyway. A time of peaceful and calming relaxation. Ahhhhhh.