Travelogue

My HeroWhen planning a trip, there is always the trade-off between reserving campgrounds ahead of time, and building some flexibility into the itinerary. On this trip, we did a little of both.

For the first 8 nights we had pretty much followed the itinerary we had mapped out at home, but had left the last two nights open.

To my surprise, Herb, who doesn’t usually do the planning, took it upon himself to find what turned out to be two really great destinations - places that hadn’t even come up on the radar when planning this trip.

Lion RockThe first of those stops was Piha Beach, located on the rugged west coast of the North Island of New Zealand, about 25 miles west of downtown Auckland.

It is New Zealand’s most famous surfing beach, renowned for the powerful swells that roll in across the Tasman Sea from Australia, giving it its reputation as a world-class surfing beach, but also a very dangerous one with strong rip currents and heavy swells. People are only allowed to swim between the narrow area between the red and yellow flags on the Lifeguards trucks.

The beach is notorious for dangerous rip currents and heavy swells. Visitors should only swim between the red and yellow flags when Surf Lifesavers are on duty.

Dangerous swimming warningsBut surfing was not what we were going there for. Herb and I center many of our trips around dramatic photographic destinations, and Piha Beach seemed just what we were looking for.

With its black sand, rugged cliffs, huge surf, and the iconic Lion Rock, it couldn’t have been any more different than Hahei Beach with its lovely pink-white sand and calm waters.

The 3-hour drive there from Hahei was a bit intense: from the windy steep roads getting off the Coromandel Peninsula, to navigating our way through the heart of Auckland, and then worst of all, the very narrow and twisty Piha Road down to the coast.

Kitekite FallsIronically, Herb’s least favorite part of the drive was getting through the Auckland suburbs where during this time of day, cars were allowed to park in one of the lanes, making it very narrow for a campervan as large as ours to squeeze through.

After that things got a little better until we came to a road construction area where we could barely squeeze between the orange cones. As we were almost through, we heard a bumping sound from beneath. Oh shoot, we thought. We had hit a cone or two perhaps, and it was probably stuck under our camper.

Lion RockWe pulled over as soon as we could and Herb peeked under the van. The good news was that there was no cone stuck there. The bad news was that the cone had knocked off the bracket that held the gray water pipe in place, and it was now dragging along the road.

I was in a panic as to what we could possibly do, but fortunately cooler heads (Herb’s) prevailed and he was able to kludge a fix. He found some parachute cord in his backpacking kit and was able to tie it to the pipe, keeping it in place, at least for a while.

My hero. Over the years I have come to assume that my engineer husband could fix anything.

Now we just had to get down twisty Piha Road without any further mishaps, which we did. We had booked a night at the Piha Domain Motor Camp, which was just a 2-minute walk to the beach and Lion Rock.

Surfs UpThe campground, and especially the very entertaining woman proprietor, had a bit of a hippy feel to it, where campers were encouraged to listen to the surf and owls, rather than loud music.

After pulling into our campsite, we took a walk down to the beach to get the lay of the land and to see the famous Lion Rock, a massive volcanic plug that stands between North and South Piha beaches.

The Maori call it Te Piha, which means “bow wave,” because the pattern created by the waves as they split around the front of the rock is similar to the spray at the prow of a canoe.

Hidden beach by TaitomoThe Europeans called it Lion Rock, because its silhouette resembles a male lion lying down in profile.

We didn’t stay long at the beach now, as we wanted to do a hike first and then come back this evening to photograph when the sun setting over the Tasman Sea would cast a golden glow on the rocks and the sand.

Taitomo ReflectionBut that was tonight’s activity. Now we were going to hike to Kitekite Falls, a multi-tiered waterfall in a rainforest setting. The trailhead was about a 3/4 mile walk from our campsite.

At the start of the hike there was a shoe-cleaning station to protect the native Kauri trees from a deadly disease we might have on the bottom of our shoes. I had never seen anything like this before. The closest thing I can remember is having to thoroughly clean our shoes before being allowed to enter a bat cave in California, so that we would not spread White Nose Syndrome, which can kill bats.

Back to the LionThe trail is a roughly 3km loop. There is a fork in the trail after about 20 minutes, where we had the choice to go an easy 10 minutes walk down to the base of the falls, or a steep 15-minute climb up to the top of the falls.

We decided to do both, but went up to the top first where people were hanging out in the small “infinity” pools at the top, called “infinity” because when sitting in one there is a view of the water spilling over the edge toward the valley below.

Golden Hour on Piha BeachThen we hiked back down to the base of the falls for a lovely view of the 130-foot, three-tiered falls, with a deep emerald swimming hole below.
All in all the hike was 3.7-miles, including back to the campground.

Later that evening, we took the short walk to Piha Beach to watch the sunset. We were delighted to see that it was low tide, because that way we could take reflection shots of Lion Rock in the wet black sand, which acted like a giant mirror.

As we often do when photographing, Herb and I each went our own way. Herb likes to focus on one particular subject and work on it for a long time, while I like to wander, just so I know I’m not missing anything.

Sunset on Piha BeachSo, Herb took some beautiful photos of Lion Rock reflected in the wet, dark sand, while I took advantage of the low tide to scamper over the lava rocks at the southern end of the beach to a sort of hidden beach where I took some silhouettes and reflections Taitomo Rock (also known as Camel Rock).

Afterwards, we found each other on the beach again and watched the sun set into the Tasman Sea.

Kudos to Herb for finding Piha Beach. Tomorrow we would head to his next selection - Murawai Beach and the Gannet Colony, which would be our final night in the camper van