Auckland’s West Coast

I saw a comment on the New Zealand forum that unless you surf, the west Auckland beaches and ranges will hold no interest for you. Not true!!!

We had 3 full days. One day was Piha and Karekare Beaches and waterfalls. We loved the starkness of Karekare Beach.

And Piha Beach has a local secret, not commonly written about.

Everyone heads there for Lions Rock.

Instead, at half-tide or lower, go to the south end of the beach. It’s an area called “The Gap”. Waves pound against the exterior walls, but the resulting flow of water creates a very calm pool for wading and swimming.

There’s also a crevice/cave that we saw folks kayaking and climbing through from the main surf/beach. No one writes about this stuff in the travel guides! So it was a nice surprise.

Inland from Piha is a track to Kitekite Waterfall. At the entrance of the track (and we noticed this on many other tracks) was a station where they ask you to spray the bottoms of your footwear to prevent the spread of some fungal tree disease.

It was a lush track and ended up at a beautiful waterfall with a large swimming hole. It’s too bad Fred and I didn’t bring swimwear. We lived vicariously through the folks who were swimming there.

Another day was to check out the Murawai Gannet colony, a Kumeu winery or two, and hike Goldie’s Bush Walk Loop.

When we visited Murawai, I had us park at the beach carpark rather than the gannet colony carpark. It’s a shorter walk to the viewpoint and I figured we would spend a little time walking the beach afterward.

From that approach to the colony, you walk some rock-shelves along the bottom of the cliffs and then up some stairs to the pathway to the viewpoint. So we were coming up a hill and saw our first gannet just behind the fence at the viewpoint.

Fred and I were the only people there and we crouched down and were snapping pictures like mad, being very quiet, thinking this bird would scare off. Only once we got a few steps closer did we realize there were hundreds (if not thousands) of gannets behind him and they aren’t scared of people at all! I’m glad no one saw us acting all frenzied about this one bird. We had a good laugh at ourselves over that.

We had some beautiful views walking back to our car and spotted a women with her dogs enjoying a day at the beach.

-Random observation… lots of very expensive horse properties on our way to Murawai! Wow!!!

The same day we did Goldies Bushwalk Loop – it was fabulous. But expect to get wet and expect to get muddy. We loved it. We started from the Horseman’s Rd end and walk down, then follow the stream up (15 stream crossings) to the waterfalls, then a quick 25-minute walk back to the car.

There are actually two falls at the end of the track. The only other people we saw for the entire 2 hours on our loop walk were at the base of the large falls. You can see a tiny orange blip on the right-hand side of the base of the falls in the picture above of one of them.

Another “laugh at myself” moment was when I was walking the bank along the stream, I came to a puddle. Every other puddle, I chose to walk around, but not this one. Why? – I have no idea. It was about 4 feet across, I had water shoes on, it shouldn’t be a problem. My first step, I was in mud to my ankle. The second step, to my knee!

Our last day was Fairy Falls and to then drove an hour to check out Whatipu Beach.

Fairy Falls was a series of falls that seem to tumble down

and

down

and down

and down.

(I know there are a lot of photos of waterfalls. Believe it or not, there were some I did not include in this report!)

Sadly,the Kauri Dieback disease has closed the Fairy Falls Track since we hiked it.

It was a long drive to Whatipu Beach and we hiked up to Lemming’s lookout (best lunch spot ever!).

I was amazed at the coastline and the views. There are sea caves north, worth exploring. The road really hugs the coast – and even has a wet concrete ford to cross. It really felt like we headed out to the middle of nowhere.