Day tripping...

I wanted to take you back to Piha - our day trip last Sunday.  It was truly stunning... helped by a gorgeous, sunny and warm May day.

Piha is about a 45 minute drive from Auckland - longer if you like to navigate from a map printed at the last minute from the internet which could have been zoomed in a little more... We did an extended tour of the western suburbs on our way to the Waitakere Ranges.

The west coast is wild, the sand is black and sticks to everything - it apparently gets baking hot underfoot in the summer.

We spent our time on North Piha - there is another smaller beach to the south of the majestic Lion Rock.

We've decided it's the perfect autumn and winter beach for us. Way too wild for swimming with children... the littlest was dunked by a very strong rogue wave and we could see more rips than we could count.

There are lots of great walks to go back to and we'd like to climb the rock without a toddler in tow.