If you’re staying in Auckland, New Zealand (NZ), have a car, and are looking for a nice location for a nice day trip location, I strongly suggest Piha Beach; it is a one to two-hour drive away (depending on the traffic) and gorgeous, with lava-rock formations and black sand beaches. It is the most popular day trip destination for Aucklanders (hence the variable travel times), as along with sun, sand, sea and surf, it offers some nice bush walks, including one vertical/aerobic one up Lion Rock.
The day we went here, we’d just picked up our rental car the day before, and had been intending to road trip up north … but I was still trying to shake off a pretty bad cold I’d picked up the first day we arrived, so rest was a priority.
My friend had initially suggested we go see the Tāne Mahuta, the largest kauri tree known to exist today (in keeping with my love of BIG THINGS), which is located in the Waipoua Forest, towards the north end of the north Island…
but that was 3.5 hours each way … without stopping for anything … so it would have been too much of a strain for me in my condition (things to do next time I go to NZ). Instead, I did some digging on-line and I found this beach that was at most 2 hours away with traffic (because it was a Saturday), but might be a lot less… so we did that…
We were actually kind of lucky, and because the weather was kind of cool that day, (I liked it, he through it was a bit chilly), traffic to the beach was minimal. That said, it is 39 km (24.25 miles) west of Auckland, on the Tasman Sea coast, has two surfing beaches ….. and is quite pretty and restful.
The population of Piha is so small (600 people) that technically it doesn’t even meet the requirements for a town, and is instead considered a settlement.
Along with the two beaches is one sheltered lagoon, although as the signs said, that is NOT safe for swimming, fishing, etc. When we first arrived, I was tired and really wanted my morning coffee, which I had forgotten to drink, and a snack… so I headed to the coffee-house just a bit up the road from the beach… keep in mind I was struggling with a cold (while there I also picked up a few T-shirts from an adjoining gift shop).
My travel buddy at the same time proclaimed a desire to climb Lion rock, which divides the two surfing beaches from each other,
and like all mountain tops in NZ, holds religious, historic, and cultural significance to the Maori people… and as such must be approached with respect….
[Note the people in the image below, beginning the climb up the rock formation]
I learned later while researching about the beach for this blog, that Lion Rock is an eroded 16-million-year-old volcanic plug rock formation. [The following images, OBVIOUSLY, are not in fact mine but were taken by my travel buddy with his camera, and borrowed with his permission… he even said I could post them. I couldn’t have taken them because I was sick with a cold, not to mention the fact that a climb like that would be unsafe for me due to my physical constraints.]
In the image below [again, his] if you look at the road going up along the river near the center of the image, and just to the left of it as it starts to turn right, that is where I was having my coffee and doing some shopping.
After his climb he met up with me at the coffee shop, and commented that the climb … which had included stairs and a handrail (so under other circumstances I might have been able to do it), wasn’t AS strenuous as he had hoped as it only allowed you to go part of the way, rather than all the way, up to the top. This was because of constraints on the climb placed there in respect of the feelings of the Maori people.
That ‘end’ location was CLEARLY marked with a Maori statue and the sign on the ground, about respecting the history of the place, that I posted earlier. He ALSO was highly critical about the fact that a lot of other folks [NOT him, because he is VERY into respectful of the concerns of Native Peoples] were ignoring that very clearly marked limit, and were continuing the climb PAST the designated point… [Note the image of him NOT smiling for the camera, because of what was going on behind him]
Afterward the two of us went down to the beach together… I loved the color of the sand, it’s not so much black as a sort of iridescent dark tan color, that reminded me of the color of my Subaru back in the states.
[For the bottom left one image, I told him where to stand, and to keep shooting till I told him to stop, then picked the best one]
Then we crossed the river emptying into the ocean, and checked out the beach south of Lion Rock… Where I became transfixed with the patterns the wind created on the water
Afterwards we both agreed that it was a wonderful place to spend an afternoon
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