Piha to Rotorua

After exploring Northland, we began to make our way south, past Auckland and into the main body of the North Island. At this point, the main trajectory of our journey was to be south as we zig-zagged our way across the North Island from top to bottom with the eventual goal of crossing over to the South Island.

It still feels strange being on a trip like this and so far away from home, but after the first week or so we began to feel comfortable and started to figure things out. Every day we had small victories like finding a hardware store to buy a stove, or finding out how to get good camping spots for free along a beach, and how to find places with wifi. We’ve covered a small amount of ground so far and it feels like we’re making a slow progress, but it’s still hard to imagine what it will be like looking back in a year.

It’s funny how, when you’re at home, you get tired of the redundancy and familiarity of everything and wish for a change. But once you get that change and find yourself in a situation like this, you sometimes find yourself longing for something familiar. I often find myself trying to find things that are the same as home and these are often as simple as seeing something like a Subway or other restaurant or store that we would also see in Canada.

In our case, there have been quite a few differences from home with the biggest one being the change in lifestyle that comes with living out of a van. But the more time that we spend in New Zealand, the more we are becoming comfortable with the way that things work and we don’t need to seek out the familiarities as much.

As our journey continues to take us south, we are noticing a lot of similarities to the landscapes that we saw in the Northland area (the tip of land that sticks out of the top of the North Island) with the same rolling green hills and beautiful beaches. But, like everywhen in New Zealand, there are always cool new places to see that are unique to anything that we’ve seen previously in the country.

 

Piha:

The first stop on this leg of the journey was just west of Auckland in a town called Piha. It’s on the west coast and is a well-known surf area. We were looking for somewhere to stay the night on our way down from Northland and this looked as good as any.

 

It’s quite a ways removed from the main highway that carries south from Auckland, and the town is very small with not much to see in it. But, for us it was worth the drive and some of the things that we saw were:

 

• Kitekite Falls:

Just on the edge of Piha is a waterfall called Kitekite falls. It’s a quick walk to the falls and doesn’t take more than half an hour. The entire time you walk up a well-worn trail along a small creek through thick bush that is very jungle like. The falls themselves are quite big and when you’re standing at the bottom you can see the three distinct tiers. The area also has a long history of logging and you can read signs along the way about how they tried to float giant logs down the river using a series of different dams until they reached the ocean and were loaded onto ships.

 

The trail also continues to the top of the falls for a different view.

 

• Lion Rock:

On the beach in front of Piha, there is a giant rock outcropping that splits the beach into two halves. It’s called Lion Rock and you can climb all the way to the top of it for a cool view down onto the beaches on either side.

 

Waihi Beach:

 

After leaving Piha, we again carried on south. We had plans to travel up towards the Coromandel Peninsula but decided against it. At some point, however, if we are in the area again we would like to check out the Peninsula, and especially a place called Cathedral Cove.

 

Rather than go to Coromandel, we had decided to check out Waihi Beach. This area turned out to be really beautiful and although we didn’t do a ton of exploring other than checking out the beaches, we enjoyed the area.

 

Our next destination was to be Rotorua, but along the way we made a couple of stops. Some of the highlights between Waihi and Rotorua were:

 

• Bridal Veil Falls:

Even though it was a little ways out of our way, Bridal Veil falls was definitely worth the drive and one of our favourite things that we had seen thus far in the trip. It is near the west coast close to the town of Raglan (which is a small surf town). We ended up arriving in the evening when we went and stayed the night in the small parking area for the falls. In the morning we then walked the 15 minutes into the falls, which was great because we were the only ones there.

The falls themselves are about 55 metres tall and the cliff that they plunge over was formed volcanically so you can see basalt columns in the face of it. The falls are in a thick jungle area, but there are a couple of viewing platforms on the top, middle, and bottom of the falls so that you can see it from many different perspectives.

 

The area near the falls is also great and I had to stop along one section of the road to take a few pictures like the one that you see below.

• Karangahake Gorge:

On our drive from Waihi to Bridal Veil falls, we were looking for a place to stop for lunch and we came across Karangakake Gorge. This area was famous for its gold mining and there are now a large network of walking loops that you can explore that allow you to see the remnants from this time in history.

 

Our favourite was to walk the Railway walkway that takes you through a very impressive 1 km rail tunnel that was built through a hillside, and then carry on to the Window’s walkway where you could see and walk along old sections of railway and old buildings that had been built through the edge of a steep cliff on the gorge.

 

It’s called the Windows Walkway because there are parts of the railway that tunnel through the side of the gorge and there are holes in the rock wall that are like windows that let daylight into the tunnel. There is even a section of an old mining tunnel that you can explore for quite a long way into the mountain.

 

This entire area was all really cool and surprised us with how impressive it was and would definitely be our recommendation if you have a few hours to explore it.

 

Places for Next Time:

A couple of places that we had to skip in this area of the country were:

• Waitomo Caves:

Even though the caves weren’t far from where we were on our way to Bridal Veil falls, we decided to skip it because of time and the cost. It is supposed to be a popular attraction, however, so we would like to see it at some point during our time in New Zealand and hope that we can see it during our next time in the area.

• Cathedral Cove:

As I had mentioned earlier, we had to skip the Coromandel Peninsula which is where Cathedral Cove is. It looks to be a great spot, however, so is worth checking out if you are in the area.