Post-Apocalyptic Black Sand at Piha Beach
Jun. 3rd, 2024 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerOn our last full day in New Zealand we drove out to the coast west of New Zealand to hike some waterfalls and visit the beaches. I posted yesterday how Karekare Beach wasn't that great on a day with crummy weather. Well, the next beach we visited, Piha Beach, was better... about as "better" as can be given it was still cloudy and cool. Oh, and windy. Windy as all hell! But hellish wind actually made it kind of interesting.
From a certain angle Piha Beach looks like a normal beach. There's a grassy sand dune, and beyond it is a sentinel rock rising up at the water's edge.
What's hellish about Piha Beach— well, the first thing that's hellish about it— is the black sand.
Include the black sand in your picture frame and all of a sudden your mind (and camera) can't adjust the colors to look like a normal beach. Now you've got this... emo beach. Or maybe it's a goth beach.
But then the wind blows and it turns into a science fiction beach.
What do I mean, "science fiction beach"? It's a beach that looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with yellowish-brown dust blowing over charred ground. Oh, and the wind's so strong people struggle to stand up straight in it, as you can see with the folks crossing ahead of me in this short video.
In beauty I walk... even when it does look kind of like a post-nuclear holocaust movie.
From a certain angle Piha Beach looks like a normal beach. There's a grassy sand dune, and beyond it is a sentinel rock rising up at the water's edge.
What's hellish about Piha Beach— well, the first thing that's hellish about it— is the black sand.
Include the black sand in your picture frame and all of a sudden your mind (and camera) can't adjust the colors to look like a normal beach. Now you've got this... emo beach. Or maybe it's a goth beach.
But then the wind blows and it turns into a science fiction beach.
What do I mean, "science fiction beach"? It's a beach that looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with yellowish-brown dust blowing over charred ground. Oh, and the wind's so strong people struggle to stand up straight in it, as you can see with the folks crossing ahead of me in this short video.
In beauty I walk... even when it does look kind of like a post-nuclear holocaust movie.
