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HAVING spent the night at the remote East Cape, my journey back towards Wellington followed the soft mudstone formations of the secluded eastern bays.
Although the mountains here aren't high by any standards, this is New Zealand's most geologically active coastline with the boundary of the Pacific and Indo-Australian plates just a few kilometres offshore. There the Pacific Plate subducts under the Australian plate which I now stand. Pieces of the Pacific Plate break off forming the line of volcanoes along the middle of the island.
The ruggedness of this coast is testament of the strong breaking Antarctic swells and the occasional tsunami generated when the fault line ruptures on a regular basis.
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