Kiting at Te Paki Dunes & Spirits Bay

January 10^th, 2020

I woke up to a glorious looking day at Tapotupatu Bay.  After a bit of breakfast, I went for a stroll along the beach.  A few kids and adults were playing in the water and some fishermen were pulling their boat out of the water.  At about 10 am I headed back towards the Te Paki sand dunes.  Today I wanted to try something different, not sand boarding, but playing around with my paraglider.

The beach at Tapotupatu Bay:

Cool roads with the sand dune in the distance.

The parking lot was quieter than the day before but there were still tourists up on the dunes having a blast.  This time, since I was carrying my paragliding backpack, it was much easier to know what I could take and could not take.  I had the luxury of bringing water, my phone, sunscreen and even some snack bars.  The hike up the hill was a bit more challenging with the extra 30-35 pounds of weight, but it wasn’t too bad.

There's my destination...the main peak.

Reaching the peak of the main dune where I had started my first sand boarding run the day before, I was a bit dismayed that the wind was already pretty strong even though it was still morning, albeit late morning.  I descended the dune towards the ocean figuring that the wind shouldn’t be as strong lower down.  I cracked open the wing open about 2/3’s the way down but had trouble stopping the wing from rolling and folding over in the blasts of wind.  Bundling it up and throwing it over my shoulder, I went even further down.  At this spot, I couldn’t see the sea anymore as there was another, smaller dune in front of me.  This made me wonder what the wind was going to be like.  Was I going to be in a rotor zone?  This is turbulent air caused by an obstruction, similar to a rock in a river and how the water is disturbed around it.   Oh, let’s give it a try.

Made it to the peak...there's the ocean.

At first, I tried kiting the wing without connecting to it.  This is relatively safe as obviously if the wind gets too strong, I can just let go.  It was strong, but not too bad.  I did have to release one side once, holding on to the other so the wing just didn’t blow away up the hill.  Okay, let’s go lower still.

My rolled up wing...

Now I put on my helmet, strapped into my harness and connected it to the wing.  Game on.  I brought it up a few times and it wasn’t too bad…in fact it was lots of fun.  After a while I tried practicing some different things:  touching one wing tip on the ground, bringing it back up and then touching the other wing tip.  I worked on the cobra launch which is a technique for strong wind where you line the wing parallel to the wind and bring up one side so that it’s not so much like a big sail on a boat as it comes up.  I tried skiing in the sand a bit, being pulled by the paraglider.

My confidence grew and so I slowly worked my way higher up the dune.  What concerned me was that the higher you go, the stronger the wind gets.  The wind has no option to go up and over an obstacle like this.  So higher up the dune, more air is getting forced up and over it and getting compressed so it’s similar to a wide river going through a narrow gap, there’s no option but for the water to speed up to get all of that volume through, which is called a Venturi.  The worst thing to happen would be to get picked up, fly up to the top of the dune and blown over the back.  Then there’s nothing providing you lift and you’d start to sink down behind the dune and you could be in serious rotor (turbulence) causing your wing could collapse and you crash…hopefully not landing on a sand boarder!

One third of the way up the 100 meter high sand dune, I brought the wing up and within a few seconds, hello…up I went!  Now it didn’t seem like a big deal at first but I got picked up a few hundred feet.  My immediate thought was apply no brakes, keep my speed up.  I seemed to just go straight up.  I didn’t actually look behind me to see how high I was relative to the peak of the dune, I was more focussed on trying to penetrate forwards.  I brought a small harness with me to New Zealand and I need to use my hands to actually get into the seat, which in this case, I didn’t even bother so I was just kind of hanging from the harness.  Eventually I slowly flew forward and probably covered about 500 feet as I slowly descended.  I was a bit concerned that I was coming down on the backside of the next, smaller dune but I trusted in the laminar flow of the air and it was all good…but that was enough for today.  I had ground handled for almost 2 hours so it was time for lunch.

It may be hard to hear my commentary, but I'm showing the footsteps on the dune where I got picked up and went for my little "ride".

It's hard to make out in this picture, but that darker patch is some small plants and rocks.  To me it looked like the Sarlaac Pit from Star Wars Return of the Jedi.  If you fall in the creature takes several thousand years to absorb your nutrients...lovely.

Such a cool place.

From the dunes I decided to head to Spirits Bay to check it out for camping for the night.  After 15 kilometres of a gravel road I pulled into the bay and wow, the drive was worth it.  The camping area was huge with a different few sections with green grass and some trees here and there.  The dominant feature in the area was a hill on one side that extended to the ocean.  The Maoris believe that the spirits of the dead gather to leave this world and travel to their ancestral home from a tree up on that hill so it is forbidden to hike up it.  The beach was a five minute walk from the camp and there was a small fresh water pond/lake part way there. 

I did a slight detour to the another bay and there were signs on the road warning you that livestock was loose...but I thought this was cool, 4-5 horses chilling on the beach by themselves.

The sacred hill:

Betty 2.0's spot for the night:

The beach was gorgeous and runs for miles in the direction away from the sacred hill.  It is made up primarily of small broken shells instead of just sand.  A great spot to hang out, try a bit of surfing or swim.  I didn’t get into the water that afternoon as I had a job to do…de-sand my wing.  I spent the better part of an hour working on getting the sand out of my paraglider and also reconnecting my reserve parachute to my harness as I had taken that off before tackling the dunes so I wouldn’t have to repack it.  It was another gorgeous beach camping spot…there are so many of these in this country!