Thursday, Feb. 10 - The Road to Piha Beach

Yesterday was an interesting day of driving to say the least!  Poor Barry drove most of the winding road to Piha from Auckland with its lovely blind corners and very narrow lanes with no shoulder.

Leaving behind the morning rush hour traffic of Auckland, we headed west towards the West Coast to check out the black sand beaches of Piha and Karekare (site of several film locations including The Piano).  We took a crazy video on the road that winds down the final stretch to Piha, and if you ever watch it, take some Gravol beforehand if you tend to get motionsick!  The beaches were both beautiful, the sand is so fine it's like baby powder.  The surf is a little rough, so I lost my nerve to go bodysurfing out there. And there was a water quality warning for Karekare beach against swimming. Got a nice burn on my feet and my chest though, where I obviously forgot to put enough sunscreen!  Sun is extremely strong here, no doubt about it.

After visiting the beaches, we took the Scenic Drive back towards Auckland via the Waitakere Ranges and the winery town of Swanson.  The area was thick and lush with vegetation, similar to a rainforest, and quite mountainous.  We stopped for a hike called Fairy Falls.  I'll call this hike "Stairmaster, Part One", as you head down, down, down into the forest on a steep path and stairs, knowing that you are going to have to trudge back up at some point!  There were Kiwis actually running back up, just to humble us even more.  The destination was thankfully worth it, with spectacular falls and pools just inviting you to jump in!  We dunked our feet into one pool, felt great.  The way back was indeed a tad difficult, but at least it was a fairly short hike, in total around 1 hr, 15 minutes.

In the evening, we drove over to the posh district of Mission Bay, where million dollar apartments are the norm.  The main beach road has a seawall boardwalk and row of funky restaurants and cafes, full of people walking, people watching, and having picnics in the park area.  We tried our first "fush and chups" meal at a small takeaway place, and had takahiri fish - a nice mild white fish. Yummmm.

The Longest Day

Life is good.  We made it to Auckland at 7 AM Wed morning after a shorter flight than expected - only 12 hours, 12 minutes(was supposed to be 13h)! Add that onto our time since leaving Calgary and we were in transit for about 22 hours.  Although we probably dozed on and off for about 6 of those 12 hours to NZ, yesterday we felt like we could be poster children for what it means to feel "jet lag"!  I also had some lovely cankles to show off in my shorts (those are fat swollen ankles by the way).

For more details on what we did in Auckland on our very long first day, visit the page on Auckland City of Sails. Cheers everyone!

We made it....

...to LAX.  After waiting in Calgary for over an hour for our flight because our plane was in storage and needed to be towed to our gate, and then getting de-snowed and de-iced, we made it!!!  To L.A., after a very bumpy flight over California.  Was happy to watch the movie The Social Network during the flight - was pretty good, but I think I'd be more impressed if I actually USED Facebook! Like some of my friends...you know who you are. :)

The "Plan"

For any longish trip, it's our experience that you should have some sort of plan of where you MUST go, where you'd LIKE to go, and where, if you have any extra time, you MIGHT visit.

So, without further ado, here's our rough plan of where we plan to go in New Zealand:

North Island:

1. Auckland
2. Tauranga region
3. Rotorua & Lake Taupo
4. Tongariro Crossing, baby!
5. Well-well-well, Wellington

And then, we toss and turn on the ferry crossing over Cook Strait to the South Island.

South Island:

1. Nelson and Abel Tasman Park
2. Kaikoura for some marine mammal watchin'
3. Christchurch
4. Canterbury Plains and Mt. Cook
5. Queenstown & Te Anau