Bites Beach, Kaka Point

This short walk follows 0.6 km, near Kaka Point in Otago.

A short strip of sand tucked under Kaka Point Road about 700 m north of Kaka Point village, with a small stream cutting across it into the sea. Locals call it Bites Beach. The name is not recorded in the New Zealand Gazetteer, so treat it as local usage rather than an official name. The walk on this page is the strip itself, roughly 550 m of sand between two rock platforms, out and back from the stream. There is no formed track, no steps and no car park. Kaka Point Road runs along the top of a low bank for the length of the beach, and the way down is the break in the bank where the stream comes out, marked by a driftwood pile. Park on the sealed shoulder beside the side road junction just north of it. From the stream you have about 250 m north to the reef and about 300 m south to the rocks below the village end. The reef at the north end is the thing to know about. At low tide you can pick your way around it, about 400 m of rock, and come out on the southern end of Molyneux Bay at the sealed roadside car park where the long bay beach begins. Petra and Bowzer, who sent this beach in, went back on a higher tide and found the water over the rocks made the crossing tricky, doable but not for everyone, so check the tide before you set off and do not count on it as a return route. LINZ maps the reef as tidal rock, and the sea covers it. The beach past the reef is different land. Everything north of the rocks, from the car park along Molyneux Bay, sits inside the Pūerua Wildlife Management Reserve, a 190 ha Reserves Act reserve on DOC's own conservation land layer, and DOC's published rule for its reserves is that you are not allowed to take a pet onto conservation land without DOC permission. We have found no DOC permission and no open dog area covering the Pūerua foreshore, so we read the reserve rule as covering that beach and Molyneux Bay stays off our map. This page stops at the reef. Everything on the strip sits in the District Plan's Coastal Resource Area, which is one of the areas the bylaw calls non designated and where a dog may be exercised off lead so long as it stays under continuous control. Kaka Point village, a short way south, is an Urban Resource Area and a leash area, and the village beach in front of the surf club is closed to dogs altogether, so this stretch is the one to use. Sea lions haul out along this coast. DOC records smaller breeding populations at Rakiura/Stewart Island, Otago and the Catlins, and lists harassment by dogs among the threats to them. A resting sea lion reads as a log until it moves. Lead on, give it a very wide berth, and take the same line back.

It sits at the easy end and barely climbs, and takes about 7 min to walk.

Dogs are welcome here. This walk is on the map because Petra & Bowzer suggested it, and we checked it against the source above.