This was, I think, my third or fourth day in New Zealand. I was feeling a bit down, coming off my East Coast trip with all the beautiful sights and from Brisbane where it had been 25degrees and sunny every day to be stuck in this little hostel in a city where it rained every day. But I was in my hostel room and these two guys said they were going on a road trip the next day to the west coast and did I want to come?
I figured why not! So we got up early the next day and hired a car (lucky I went in the end because neither of them had driving licenses in English!) and headed off to a little beach town called Piha! There was a German guy and a Brazillian guy who were both super friendly, and luckily the German was very on top of the planning. First he took us to a waterfall on the way, where we walked for maybe an hour through this forest. The first thing we came to was the stream with amazingly clear, blue water trickling through the trees - already the most NZ thing I’d seen so far - and then we followed the stream to the top of the waterfall where there were literally no other people! Just this clear water going up to the edge of the cliff and over. Naturally, we took off our shoes to start scrambling although the water was SO COLD you couldn’t really paddle, it just helped avoid getting wet shoes.
We hung out there for a while, then followed the path down the cliff to the bottom (left hand waterfall pic) where it was even bigger than it looked from the top! (suddenly a lot more nervous about how close we were to the edge!) The pool was too deep and too cold to get under the falls, but it was still amazingly clear and refreshing, and you could follow the river down back into the forest. In contrast to Australia, there were hardly any signs or barriers or fences. You got the impression you could have followed the river to the sea and no one would have minded (but it would be a long walk!)
Instead, we walked back to the car (all uphill this way!) and finished driving to Piha! It’s a little seaside town where the sand is BLACK (I think this is fairly common around NZ, it means the sand is volcanic!) it’s actually really surreal, since it feels just like regular sand but is such a different colour (I should have saved some white sand from Whitehaven beach to compare!) and also it’s really hot on your feet! We walked across the beach, investigated some caves and then climbed up onto the bluff to get views over the whole area. The water was, if anything, even colder than the waterfalls (SO COLD) but we did paddle a tiny bit because we are COMMITTED. We walked back into town and found a little burger shack for lunch, and then we were browsing the map and saw another waterfall just 15 minutes drive away. It was a bit cold for sunbathing, so we hopped back in the car and headed off.
This waterfall was much closer to the car park, only about half a kilometre walk via another, smaller waterfall (I’m sensing a bit of a NZ theme here). The plunge pool was too deep to get under the waterfall, but you could walk around through the bushes to come out next to it where you could half-scramble, half-paddle across the rocks and get almost underneath (that pic’s on facebook, I ran out of room here!)
We had time for one more walk before sunset, so we decided to try this track up the hill towards a cave. I don’t know if the track exists, but we lost it or the track has become so overgrown as to be unrecognisable but we were definitely on it for about 5 minutes and then just climbing a bluff through the larger gaps in the plants and trees. We never reemerged on the path, but we did have an ADVENTURE and then we found the local beach. The aim was to sit and watch sunset but right around 5:30 thick clouds came over right at the horizon. :(( We headed back towards the car park and somehow missed the beginning of the path AGAIN, ending up walking through a bog (sometimes up past my knees!) in the vague direction of where we knew the car was!! We found a tarmac path right at the end, but I still have no idea where it started!
But we did find the car, and the clouds must have cleared a bit because the last light of the day was shining off the bog, very pretty. We drove back through the mountains to the city where we got pizza and high fived an awesome day out.
So yes, New Zealand is beautiful. It just takes a little bit of work to get out there :)
