EPIC Sea Caves HIDDEN in Whakatane, New Zealand

Oh, just a little tight. Just a little too tight. We are in Whakatane today to check out the Whakatane Heads. And last year we explored from the Ohope Beach side a small hidden cove with a hidden beach and a beach waterfall on it. Today we're coming around from the other side, the Whakatane side. You can tell it's almost Christmas time here in New Zealand because behind me we have the Pahutakawa tree in bloom, otherwise known as the New Zealand Christmas tree with these beautiful red blooms. You can see Sam is eager to go. She's all the way out there already. Can't get, can't hold her back when it comes to snorkeling. I don't know what this guy's doing over here. It looks like some kind of fishing boat. A bunch of aggressive seagulls over there. So we're rapidly approaching summertime here. So plenty of beach adventures to come I think for you guys. And we made the call to go without the wetsuits today. Hopefully that was the right call. Hopefully they don't peck my eyeballs out because I might need those. That's like an arch right there. This island has some cool stuff. That's what I'm talking about, the arch. No, on the island there's that hole. Some caves over here. Oh, nice little find here. Oh, oh, look, look, look. Oh, I'm getting all up in that. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited because I remembered, actually I should say Sam remembered the headlamps today, which I often forget when doing sea cave exploration. So it's an exciting day. I haven't been in the water yet. Let's see what we have. Looks pretty deep to me too. Oh, nice echo. I think that goes back pretty far because I hear it echoing. Yeah, are you coming? All right, I'm going in. Oh yeah. Wow, this is a good one. Hello? Echo. This might even come out the other side. Awesome. Look at this. Holy cow. Amazing. Honestly, I was not expecting to find anything like this today. Right off the bat, first cave. This is spectacular. See how dark it is back here. Just the light from outside just poking through. Jump on top of this cave too. I just got swarmed by like a million bugs and swallowed a bunch of them accidentally. Gross. That's the closest thing I've got. Pretty aggressive. I'm just trying to go in this cave, Seagull. I'm just going through the cave, bro. I'm not going up there. I'm going through here. It's all good, bro. Just going through here, man. Just going through here. Whoa. I just saw a massive fish jump. Holy cow. Yeah. It got like pushed up against the rock or something. I think it was giant. I mean, I think it was a fish. Oh yeah. Look even more over there. Come on, man. This place is amazing. Wow. Pretty awesome, huh? Oh, I don't know. Probably not, but I'm going to go take a look. What, like a like a horseshoe? Oh, I mean, I don't see any light coming through on the other side though. That's the thing. Big rocks though. I think this one goes through. Pretty narrow little crack back there. In the distance there, I'm pretty sure that that is White Island. It's a volcanic island where several people died a couple years ago. They used to run tours out of Whakatane to White Island helicopter tours, but not since it erupted or there was some kind of event where several people died. But there were some hero helicopter pilots that flew back and helped save several people too. So a lot of heroism on that day. But yeah, White Island, one of the many active volcanoes in New Zealand. Lots of Neptune's necklace here. Neptune's necklace. So this stuff is edible. It's rich in iodine. Like I think a lot of seaweed is, but there's there's water inside of here. So if you bite into it, it like sprays salty spray in your mouth. Pretty good. Neptune's necklace. And there's like some, like I've seen like a diagram where like the necklace protects your thyroid from the iodine because your thyroid's like right about here. So that's why they call it a necklace, I guess. I'm not really sure. I just know it's known as Neptune's necklace. I'm not sure if that's like a, there's probably a Maori name for it too. I just don't remember. But if I can find it, I'll put it down below. But yeah, wild edible. I mean, there's tons of it here. Look, look at all this. There's also a ton of kina. I haven't seen any yet because it's so murky, but kina or sea urchin. So coastal foraging. It's always good to know a couple of things. A couple of things in the area that you're exploring in case you ever need to survive. But plenty of Neptune's necklace. It's like a massive cave, partially collapsed over there. But all along these cliffs, you can see pahutakawa trees, like I was saying, the New Zealand Christmas tree. It blooms. Those red flowers bloom right around Christmas time, late November, early December. You start seeing those red flowers pop and it's a beautiful reminder of the season. Oh, it's a little tight. Just a little too tight. It's actually surprisingly warm considering it's such an overcast day today and it just started drizzling. I actually kind of prefer it right now because when the sun's out, clear skies, it's so powerful in New Zealand, especially up on the North Island, that it just, it wears you down. You get burned real quick. And you know, so far, not a big deal to go without the wetsuit. I've kind of been in and out of the water. So water temp is nice. Air temp is nice. All around, even though it's a little bit gray, it's a pretty beautiful day weather-wise. Perfect opportunity to do something like this before we take off out of this area. So this cave, this little cave here, is actually a little bit beyond that. It's the furthest point where we went last time, coming from that direction. Beach waterfall is somewhere over there, and on the other side of that ridge is the Ohope Beach. These stairs take us back up to this side. On top, there's a trail we can take by another waterfall, I think, and then back down to near where we parked the car. So we can make a nice little loop out of this. We don't have to go back the way we came. Pretty sweet. So this area, this whole ridgeline that we're walking across, we're right here. And this used to be a pa. A pa, from what I understand, is kind of like a fort, a defensive position. So they dug trenches, and they had these high cliffs on both sides. They had gardens, and they could fortify here in case they were attacked. Pretty interesting. Walking back on this trail, you have to go back through town. I'm starting to get real hungry. Luckily, came across these nasturtiums here. Nasturtiums, I don't think they're native to New Zealand, but both the flowers and the leaves are edible. But just got to make sure a dog hasn't urinated on them. Infamous.