On beauty.

Something to think about (may or may not be true, I don't know, but I thought of it):

"Something achieves beauty when the observer becomes so inundated with 'data' about that something that the observer is left unable to speak or think."

Of course, I mean 'data' to be literally anything, from "that mountain has snow on it" to "the sky is blue from Rayleigh scattering" to "damn those clouds are freaking huge". Anyways, that's that.

The Coromandel Peninsula is beyond words. I have redundant albums set up since Fotki is being jerks with their storage space (I had to delete and re-add all the albums); the other one is at Yahoo. I took as many pictures this weekend as I did my entire time here so far.

One could say that the trip was much like a short story, with its extremely long rising action (about 20 hours), short but profound climax (3 hours), and a quick falling action and conclusion (3 hours). Each time I took a picture I didn't think it could get any better, but of course each view continued to blow my mind more than the last. Here are some links.

http://public.fotki.com/masterN17
http://photos.yahoo.com/princeofdarknez

I left with 2 German postgrads (Evelyn and Claudia) and one South African postgrad (Daan) and we rented a car Friday morning and drove out on Highway 25. It goes north up the west coast of the peninsula (through Thames to Coromandel) and offers gorgeous and breathtaking views. (which is the first set of pictures) We then cut east to Whitiangi, passing some amazing north-facing beaches along the way. We went around Whitiangi to the east-facing beaches: Cook's Beach, Hahei Beach, and Hot Water Beach. We surveyed each of the three and picked Cook's Beach as a good place to sleep. So under the stars we slept, with no light pollution at all to distort our breathtaking view of the Southern Hemisphere sky. With the exceptions of the Milky Way, Orion, and the Southern Cross, everything was totally new.

We woke up at Cook's Beach around 4 am and drove 20 minutes to Hahei, where the entrance to Cathedral Cove lies. Parked, and walked about 45 minutes through some dense forestry and we arrived around 5:30 AM at Cathedral Cove. About 30 minutes later the sun began to rise.

Simply stunning.

We left around 10 AM, as the influx of tourists began to increase. As we walked away, we caught a daytime view of everything we missed at night.

Simply stunning.

We spent some time at Hot Water Beach's low tide (around 11 AM), when the water moves out far enough to access the hot springs directly underneath the beach. Simply stick your feet in the sand, work them down about six inches, and bam, hot water comes rushing up and scalds your feet. After a few burns, I worked out how much I needed to dig to keep my feet comfortably warm while the cold ocean water washed over the rest of my legs. I would call this the falling action, despite it being an exciting experience.

The conclusion? We followed Highway 25 down south to Tairua and ate, and then cut west on the 25A back to Auckland.

Today I went to Murawai, a west coast beach near Piha about 45 minutes away. It was the first beach I saw that resembled a California beach, the most distinctive characteristic being a full open view of the ocean, with no islands. It was good, but I was still too high off of Cathedral Cove to really get excited about it.

I still spend about an hour every day looking at my pictures. In fact, I may be doing that right now.

On a side note, I haven't been to my engineering class since Tuesday. It was the only day I went that week.

Lake Taupo (aka Mount Doom) on April 1st or 8th.
Until then, bungee jumping, rugby games, and the Bay of Islands.

- N