Excursion to Kitekite Falls and Piha Beach

Saturday morning, 30 January 2016, we got up early and headed west. We were headed for a track to Kitekite Falls and Piha Beach.

Though we were following Sister Garmin, we struggled to find the best place to park and start the hike. We pulled off one place, jumped out of the car, started down the trail, going great, downhill then came to an intersection. . . Jeff recalled that the hike should be on a gravel trail and flat?! What?! We went back to the car and tried again.

We realized that we needed to drive to Don Esk road. We started the trek there and it was perfect. Nice trail, pretty flat for most of it and totally in the shade. The trail followed the river and the trees and foliage made the hiking not too hot. It was green and lush.

The Falls were very beautiful. They were tall, cascading down the mountain over rocks into a pool. We arrived just before the crowd. There were a few people swimming and enjoying the falls.

We saw that you could go to the top of the falls. We didn’t know where the trail was so we started climbing up the side of the mountain, grabbing anything we could to pull ourselves up. It was a bit muddy and steep, when we reached the real trail. The rest of the way was easy sailing.

At the top we saw a group of young adults getting ready to repel down the side of the falls. We could just imagine Max wanting to do that.

We hiked back down to the pool. More and more people were arriving. We headed back to the trail. We stopped at a lookout to watch the repellers. Pretty cool.

We drove down the road to Piha Beach.  It is one of New Zealand’s beautifully rugged beaches, with black sand, the beach stretching along the coastline forever and gradually disappearing into the horizon. There were lots of people surfing, swimming, body-surfing, and building sand castles. The holiday had brought lots of people to the beach.

Lion’s Rock has a path to the top. We were tired and hungry by then so we opted to head home instead of hiking to the top.