New Brighton beach + hostel

  

The night before this sunrise, I had been very tired because of jet lag, and meaning to take a short nap, I ended up sleeping for 4 hours. Then I stayed up for about an hour and went to bed for the night at about 9:30pm. I woke up at 7 and couldn't go back to sleep so I went to take pictures of the sunrise through the window of the hostel kitchen. 

     

This is the adorable kitchen, like a 4 season porch, with huge windows.

Also, the other side of the kitchen, where we put groceries, (well labeled, for fear of being thrown out by the staff. haha) including our strawberry milk, which was cheaper then other types. Milk costs a bundle here, also calls them by different names. There is regular, lite, and cali-slim. 

I decided after breaky to go down to the New Brighton beach by myself for a walk. It's about 2 minutes walk from our hostel to the beach. The New Brighton Pier stretches out for a long way over the awesome breakers. Lots of surfers in the afternoon time, and even some kite surfers.

This was morning time though, it was quite overcast. 

  

Beautiful water, it's pretty cold though, with the breeze.

Directly under the pier.

I went walking way down the beach, probably 2 or 3 km. The view of the mountains from the beach is incredible.

My hair got pretty crazy from all the wind! The sun kept peeking through all the clouds.

This bird is very cool, I actually walked up to it this close, this isn't extreme zoom. I have no idea what kind of bird it is, just that it was super chill and was sunbathing in the tide.