Piha and Kitekite waterfall.

There is a place called Piha on the coast west of Auckland region and this was my destination for the day. I set off on a course through the city which I had etched into my brain with many mental trial runs because when the road signs mostly don’t say where the roads go and every road looks pretty much identical to the next you need to know precisely where you are going. All was going well until I reached a roundabout, fine, you would have thought, they work to precisely the same rules and in the same direction as roundabouts in the UK which I have navigated happily and without incident for six years. But getting all a-posteriori about this, I have to say they’re pretty awful over here, New Zealand drivers don’t seem to know how to use them. When approaching a roundabout in the UK you scan all the entrance lanes and immediately you can tell which exit each driver is going to take when they are still fifty metres from the roundabout and 99% of the time you will be absolutely correct. The remaining one percent of drivers I shall quite presumptuously and unscientifically accuse of being Kiwi drivers on holiday in the UK. Anyway, I ended up sitting waiting to pull onto the roundabout, letting gaps go by and making attempts to pull out as people meandered their cars in front of mine. But eventually I made a successful break for freedom and left the driver behind me to make reason of the strange twirly thing in front of him.

There were no other roundabouts on the roads to Piha, this was good. The roads leave Auckland and head through the Waitakere ranges which border the urban extent of Auckland but despite this proximity they are very well forested and quite undeveloped, it’s not uncommon for people to go missing here and never be found. I don’t think there is a British equivalent to this, everywhere is too urban. I drove through the Waitakere’s sub-tropical flora and unlike the UK there were no little villages with post offices and naively presuming ‘Thank you for driving carefully though our village’ signs as you leave the village.

 (Piha Beach)

The road arrives in Piha at quite an altitude and I got several quite good millisecond views of Piha beach and Lion Rock as I guided my car down the steep winding road to the beach car park. I parked my car and began walking towards Lion Rock, this is a large stack raising roughly one hundred metres out of the beach and at every high tide it becomes an island. There is a path that climbs to the top and this was where I was aiming for, however, there was a river in the way, a deeper than the water proofing on my boots type river. Being too lazy to take my boots off and walk across, I found a narrow section, stared at it for a bit, took some steps back, narrowly avoiding walking into someone, took my run up and jumped. Thud. You didn’t think I wouldn’t make it did you? With my still dry feet I headed straight up Lion Rock. Unfortunately you can only climb half way up the rock because a land slip nearer the top makes it too dangerous to continue. It must be extremely dangerous for New Zealand to deem somewhere unsafe. I spent the rest of my time on the beach wondering where the original path went and never worked out where it could have gone, it must have been a big landslide! 

(Lion Rock, only partially climbable)

(The current path stops half way up the right hand side of this picture and the closed way up is somewhere in the picture above, I think I can see a 'path' but not a path)

There was a good view of Piha from half way up the rock, the houses were all spread out and based on some desultory plan. The town wasn't good on the eye from the outside but looking away from the town from within probably would be a good view, hence why people want to live there.

(Piha, a town with some houses in-between trees)

I decided to head back to the car now and go to the Kitekite waterfall in the hills behind Piha. This was a fairly easy ramble following a stream and it led to some good viewing locations of the falls. This was a pleasant walk through trees, the ubiquitous view-blocking trees of New Zealands 'scenic' areas, and was very relaxing. 

 (Trees)

All was well, then I heard the voices of people and children and they were getting louder and then they arrived and were being where I wanted to be and making noise! I moved on to the base of the falls and there were more people there, the worst kinds, children and whole family groups and they were having fun and taking pictures and laughing and splashing water and forcing me to politely stop through my own volition to avoid being in their pictures. Grrrrrrr. Why can’t they all go home and stop sharing the Waitakere’s with me, why! Maybe I should avoid coming here on the first day of the school holidays to avoid slight irritation next time. The falls were quite impressive, they weren’t a single drop but six distinct steps where the water runs over the rocks. When the area was logged a dam was built at the top of the falls to contain enough water to release and wash logs down to the base of the waterfall. This was a common practise to transport logs but at Kitekite this was met with mostly broken logs, I can see why, and they never used it for the same purpose again. 

 

(Kitekite falls)

I headed back to my car along the longest section of wooden steps in the whole world and drove back home though Auckland. Not via a roundabout this time.