Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Wharariki is often cited as New Zealand’s most beautiful beach.
It is quite easy to reach, but its “remote” location – on the northwest “corner” of New Zealand’s South Island, – still keeps visitor numbers relatively low.
Screensavers are now out of favour, but for some years an image taken from a cave on Wharariki Beach was Windows 10’s default.
Thus – mostly, unwittingly – many millions of human eyes have (vicariously) looked across Wharariki’s sands to the Archway Islands.
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New Zealand’s biggest spit is big, even if Australia’s biggest – the star of #3 in this series – is circa four times longer, and rather more massive.
Farewell Spit is the northernmost tip of NZ’s South Island.
As mentioned in the previous post, a spit is a highly dynamic landform; this is especially so if much of that spit is low-lying, bare sand.
At low tide, Farewell Spit’s “above water” length comfortably exceeds thirty kilometres.
At high tide, or during some storms, it is well shy of thirty kilometres; much of its far end then becomes a submerged sandbar.
My photo was taken at 6.10 pm in July 2010; it looks across from Terra firma to Farewell Spit’s firmest, tallest, best vegetated, most stable section.
Had I been looking down from a satellite or a high-flying plane, Farewell Spit’s appearance would have been altogether more singular.
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Definition, ex Wikipedia:
A spit (cognate with the word for a rotisserie bar) or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores. It develops in places where re-entrance occurs, such as at a cove’s headlands, by the process of longshore drift by longshore currents. The drift occurs due to waves meeting the beach at an oblique angle, moving sediment down the beach in a zigzag pattern. This is complemented by longshore currents, which further transport sediment through the water alongside the beach.
If a spit is extraordinarily long, long-established and well-vegetated, many people will fail to recognise that it is a spit.
This post’s big spit is not in the photo’s foreground, and does not have an enormous number of pelicans and cormorants standing upon it.
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You are looking at the kind of beach with which Australia is particularly well-endowed.
Many Australians love to frequent such beaches..and to brag about them to Europeans.
Key features, all present here: frequently-intense sunshine, clear, unpolluted, “blue” water, plus plenty of clean and bright sand.
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Essentially, sand is a “marriage” of just two of our planet’s most common elements: silicon and oxygen.
Nonetheless, sand offers an astonishing amount of visual diversity.
In some parts of the world, if you look down from an aircraft – ideally, one flying relatively “low”, but high enough to render small plants “invisible” – you could be fooled into believing that everything within your field of view was 100% sand.
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Indonesia’s enormous number of volcanoes includes many active ones.
Whereas an active volcano’s crater is typically stark, precipitous and raw, its flanks’ appearance is likely to be more varied/variegated, according to where eruptions have – or have not – scorched or gassed them, rained down ash and/or lava rocks/boulders, or sent molten lava flowing…
A single volcano can “author”many different things.
Gorgeous rainforests and prodigiously fertile soils can sit adjacent to “devastated”, seemingly-barren (sometimes, relatively briefly, actually-lifeless) zones.
One stream’s waters may be safe to drink, whilst another’s, nearby, could be highly toxic.
This teaser series’ final episode features what was in fact the last photo I took on Javanese soil in 2024.
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“Our” planet’s largest highly acidic lake is the one in Kawah Ijen – the Ijen Crater.
I took this post’s photo from the rim of Kawah Ijen, in almost-easternmost Java, at 5.51 am on 24 October 2024.
My beloved and I were at circa 2400 metres above sea level, with the lake’s surface some 200 vertical metres lower than our feet.
The red fabric in the foreground is trying to tell tourists “do not venture any closer to the crater’s edge”; it was placed there not many moons ago, soon after a Chinese tourist’s fatal fall.
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At 2,329 m ASL, East Java’s Mount Bromo (Gunung Bromo) comfortably exceeds Australia-proper’s high point.
Its own complex includes several taller volcanoes, but Bromo is the most active one.
When Bromo is not being too active, its rim is a relatively easily climb for tourists. (and Hindu pilgrims, some of whom come to hurl sacrificial animals into the volcano’s roaring/steaming/smoking crater)
Accordingly, it is the “star attraction” in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, aka “TNBTS”.
TNBTS also contains Mount Semuru – Java’s highest mountain, at 3,676 metres.
Within TNBTS‘s massive caldera are several volcanoes; they are surrounded by Indonesia’s only such volcanic “sea of sand”.
Weather permitting, the park’s most popular viewpoint – atop Mount Penanjakan – offers stunning views of all the aforementioned from 2,782 metres (9,127 feet) ASL
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On 20 October 2024 Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as Indonesia’s 8th President.
That afternoon his predecessor, Joko Widodo – generally known as “Jokowi” – flew out of Jakarta, to return to his Central Javanese home city of Surakata – generally known as “Solo”.
Before his two terms as President (2014-2024) Jokowi was Jakarta’s governor for two years.
From 2005 to 2012 he was Solo’s very popular mayor; he is still hugely popular there.
On the afternoon and evening of 20.10.2024 much of Solo’s population lined its main thoroughfare to bid him “welcome home” and “thank you”.
It was the largest political event I have ever witnessed…and the happiest.
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Although its “proper” name is Surakarta, most people refer to this pleasant city in Central Java by its nickname: Solo.
Every Sunday morning the city’s main thoroughfare – Jalan Slamet Riyadi – is closed to motorised traffic, so residents can enjoy “various leisure activities”.
These include dancing and exercising in the street, plus a nicely informal market that stretches long and thin, along the roadside edge of the footpaths.
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