one of the (many) cool things about living in Auckland is its proximity to the Waitakere ranges – a huge area of native ‘bush’ ie our local rain forest.
so after a morning of skyping we headed down to Piha, which is a world famous surfing beach on the west coast on the far edge of the bush
we had a picnic on the black volcanic (and magnetic) sand and watched the world go by
it’s actually quite an exciting world to watch down there which is why there’s a reality TV documentary type thing following the adventures of the Piha life guards.
we didn’t see any incidents, but the cameras are always filming in case something happens so they can include it in the show. it must be a funny life for them, wishing on others’ misfortunes so they can make good telly !
the ‘thing’ with Piha is its strong rip (undercurrent) which drags unsuspecting swimming sideways along the sea. they quickly get tired fighting against it so start to sink, which is when the lifeguards coming rushing in on their speed boats, jet skies, floaty things or quad bikes. so stick between the flags kids
we expected it to be packed, but we found a parking space quite easily in an overflow carpark and had a little mooch about before heading up the road to our main activity for the day …
which was a walk up to the KiteKite falls.
I told one of our kiwi friends at our new year’s day beach thing yesterday that we were going to “kite kite” falls and he said he’d never heard of it. i was a bit confused as they are a famous tourist destination.
Jane overheard our conversation and all three of us realised my silly school boy error at the same time.
it isn’t pronounced ‘kite’ as in the flying thing, it’s actually kitty as the ‘e’ on the end of a word is sounded out. just like waitakere is ‘why-tack-er-y ‘. as soon as i said ‘kitty kitty’ he knew what i was talking about. d’oh
the walk through the bush was really lovely, and started with us having to wash our shoes to prevent the historic trees catching the lurgy from our shoes
this was our first view of the falls as we walked along the path. i think there was a geocache near this point, but we didn’t look for it.
we forgot to take the girl’s swimming gear with us (their ‘togs’) so they just had a paddle in the freezing waters
we did see an eel though.
we came a slightly different way back to make it in to a round walk
Tomorrow is church in the morning and then who knows what in the afternoon !