One of my 101 in 1001 goals was to visit three of my favourite beaches in the area – Waipu, Mangawhai Heads, and Te Arai. Mangawhai Heads is easy – that’s our local beach and we go there all the time. Waipu is pretty simple too; we tend to go there once or twice a year to visit Cove, a café opposite the beach that we really like. Te Arai was the challenge though, because although it’s not at all hard to get to – it’s just about a 20 minute drive from our place – we just don’t tend to go! We have a pretty amazing beach just down the road at Mangawhai Heads, and there are no cafés or restaurants at Te Arai, so there never really seems to be a super compelling reason to visit.
Oh, except for this of course…
Of the three beaches, Te Arai is absolutely my favourite. It is just so ridiculously, beautifully stunning. And that’s why it made it onto my 101 in 1001 list, because it is so worth the extra effort to go there and I wanted to make sure we didn’t just keep putting it off!
Here are some more photos of our perfect beach day, if you’d like to see…
The Judd Crew 