Many of our friends went away this weekend on a diving trip, so the rest of us decided to rent a car for the weekend and travel around. What started out as a trip for about 5 people turned into a trip for 15! It was$98 to rent a car for one day, and $80 for two days... so we ended up with three cars for two days. We drove to Waitakere Ranges, a national park only 45 minutes away from the city center. We had a little trouble starting out: all 3 cars got off different exits while we were trying to find a grocery store. We finally met up with one car while the other had apparently gone to the park already.
It was a beautiful day when we finally arrived. Our first stop was Piha Beach; it is a black sand beach on the west coast. It was much larger than I had expected! There was a giant rock formation in the middle of the beach that we climbed up to eat lunch with spectacular views.
(This is a view of the beach and giant rock/cliff from very high up and far away.)
It was so peaceful all the way at the top as I listened to the waves crashing below. We watched as two surfers tried to catch some waves, but they didn't seem to be having much luck.
After lunch we climbed down, just as it started to rain. Luckily it didn't last long and we were able to head over to the waterfall. Hiking to the waterfall was like hiking through a rainforest! I have never been to a forest with such tropical looking vegetation before. There was a stream running along side the path and the water was strangely blue looking.
Three of our friends were crazy enough to get in the water and it was FREEZING! I don't know how they did it... especially since we had no towels and they were planning on camping overnight in the cold. Too bad this wasn't a hot spring or I would've joined in too!
Nine of our friends spent the night camping, although a few of them did not have sleeping bags... I on the other hand went home to sleep in my own bed. The next morning four of us went to Hunua Ranges to see a different waterfall and to hike. This waterfall bigger and had a lot more force: you definitely wouldn't want to swim under this one.
We then took a 3 hour hike up a mountain. For a while it seemed like we were only walking up and we would never walk down! It was tiring but worth it. This place felt like a rainforest as well, and it actually did rain most of the way down. We met some very friendly people along the way. I could not believe how many people were trail running on the mountain... I was just tired walking! And all of the people running were older than us.. so we felt really good about ourselves, ha.
As we were leaving we stopped to take some picture of the rolling green hills.
Now this is what I picture New Zealand to look like! (The Shire anyone..?)
