A Beach Day

Andrew and I have agreed that if it weren’t for dear family, friends, and our pup Donovan, we’d just miss our home bound flights in a few weeks and stay here. Not sure New Zealand would be too happy with us – there is that small thing called a visa overstay…sigh. A girl can dream. We love it here. The people are friendly, the roads – while narrow – are plenty decent, the food is amazing/healthy/plentiful, cost of living only nearly as bad as where we live now…and the landscape just keeps getting better. Alas, we tried the “escape to another country” once already – and we missed our loved ones way too much to pull that again. So we are drinking in all we can during our stay and will hope to return for another infusion!

Our second day we explored some of the beautiful beaches on the west coast of the North Island. This was Andrew’s first real test of driving like a local – overall he did great…our running joke with him is that every time he reaches for the turn signal he does what he is used to on the left side – and turns on the windshield wipers instead. Hilarious, understandable, and not very useful when trying to make a turn. Retraining in progress.

Our first stop was at Bethells Beach about an hour from Auckland. I was most struck at first by the sheer expanse of the view along the beach, endless blue sky, and dramatic rock formations that dot the coast. As we continued the day this type of “WOW!” continued – apparently this is the norm as far as scenery goes. Very rough waters didn’t seem to curtail some brave surfers and a few random foolish swimmers, but we chose to walk along the beach with the tide far out and hike up to a great vantage point overlooking the coastline. We are finding that there are many, many walking, hiking, or “tramping” trails in all these types of natural settings which makes exploration that much easier.

We then made our way to another very popular beach called Piha Beach and were equally stunned by its beauty and expanse. Here there were incredible rock formations scattered along the waterfront with tide rolling in and out of natural caves and calm pools to relax in behind the breakfront that shielded from rough waves. Since this is summer vacation in NZ, this beach was chock full of families and very brave surfers (despite obvious warning flags and monitoring by the beach police). Ruthie, Lauren and I climbed up to a gorgeous overlook that allowed us to see a huge portion of the western coastline – it was breathtaking.