Trip to the beach

Last Saturday, we took our last trip to the beach for the summer. It was a gorgeous fine weekend, so we went to our favourite beach - Mt Maunganui. The kids had great fun playing on the sand and paddling in the water. We also went for a walk part way around the base of the mount to go looking in the rock pools. The rock pools didn't turn out to be very good, there was the usual shellfish stuck to the rocks and then the only other live things we saw were 2 crabs (one the size of my hand, the other one even smaller). The kids also got to play at the park and try out the spinning dome thing that has replaced what we used to call the spinning christmas tree.

AND...we experienced our first tsunami! This was the morning after the Japan earthquake and there had been a tsunami warning for the mount. We thought it never arrived although at one stage we were confused about the tide times as the tide seemed to be coming in when it was suppose to be going out. We then discovered during the week that it had been a rolling tsunami (a collection of little wave surges, not just one big wave like we normally think a tsunami is), and the high tide was 8cm higher than normal. It also explained why the tide seemed to be coming in and going out at weird times.