Tractors in Opiti Beach

On our first weekend at Matarangi, our friends Harley & Lilian came up to visit. As they are familiar with the area they took us for a driving tour. We went out a long windy narrow road to the beach community at Opiti.

Especially in the beach communities where we like to stay, boats are everywhere, but because New Zealand is surrounded by ocean, and there are tides, people generally do not keep their boats tied up at docks. Cities have marinas, but otherwise, they take their boats to the beach or boat ramp every time they want to go out on the water. Sometimes its quite nerve-wracking to come around a corner on a narrow road to be faced with a car towing a behemoth boat to the nearby ramp.

Opiti was unusual for us, in that every home or bach seemed to have an old tractor parked in the yard. We watched a tractor pull a boat trailer up a narrow stream crossing the beach to where it could access the road. Harley explained that people do not like to put their cars in the salt water so they will keep a tractor at the bach to tow the boat and trailer to the beach. One house had two tractors in the yard.