Gone Fishin'

Manda writes:

Cathedral Cove was the first place we visited today. This place is only accessible by foot and from the car park it took about half an hour to get there. The track was hilly yet scenic and the result was definitely worth the effort. The beach is how I imagined some beaches in Thailand to look, and nothing like one I'd expect to see in New Zealand. In the sunshine, the water was a beautiful mix of dark blue and turquoise tones, with gigantic white rocks jutting out just beyond the shoreline.

Cathedral Cove is only accessible at low tide through an arched cavern. Still, if the tide had come in, I can think of worse places to be stranded in! Once we had our fill of the sights (and recovered from the walk!), we wandered back to the house.

In the late afternoon, we went fishing with Ted. We walked over to the estuary which backs on to their holiday home. The tide was on its way out but we still had a good few hours left. It was quite an experience as neither of us have tried this properly before. Ian had a go first but didn't have much luck. There were a few false alarms where the current was dragging the hook along the bottom of the estuary channel and Ian thought he had a bite. Eventually, he managed to catch not one fish, not even two fish, but a seagull! The dizzy bird, along with a few of his 'acquaintances' (I use the term lightly here as they were pecking at him too!), had dived towards the fishing line in pursuit of the bait, a piece of squid, now totally covered in sand. Nice seasoning!

At first I was worried that the hook might have gone through the seagull's wing. Fortunately, it hadn't and the fishing line had got tangled up in his wing. Once Ted managed to untangle the line (not an easy task with a distressed bird flapping his wings, desperate to escape the scene), the seagull scarpered leaving the very thing he was initially after. I guess the bait wasn't so important after all and he was just happy he'd escaped with his wing still intact.

It was my turn next and within a short period of time, I managed to catch a fish - with the help of Ted. After much deliberating over what type of fish it was, we came to the conclusion that it was a male 'spotty'. Needless to say, I spent the next few hours gloating about my catch to Ian! "Do you want to stay here 'til 9 o'clock until I catch one?" he retorted, eyes transfixed on the fishing line, watching eagerly for signs of movement. Ted and I just rolled our eyes! He still didn't catch one by the time we left.

Manda catches the only fish of the day.

Ted and I also picked pipis and tuatuas (types of shellfish, not unlike cockles) from the estuary bed. There were hundreds of them and we didn't have to search hard to find some. We took them home, cooked them and served them up as a starter. The fish was kept as bait for Ted's next fishing trip as it was not big enough to eat. But I'm sure if you ask me about this in a couple of months' time, this spotty would have miraculously become a 3ft man-eating shark!