Todd and Oana decided to take a trip to New Zealand, and the 1st stop after getting off the plane and getting our rental car was to drive to Piha Beach, just west of Auckland, New Zealand.  It took us a little over an hour from the airport, but that included me driving on the left side of the road for the first time in 20+ years when I was stationed in Japan, and also dealing with a lot of curvy roads to get here.

Why Piha Beach?

Well to be honest, we landed at 0900 local time (That’s 9AM for non-airline types where we use 24 hour time) and we knew our hotel room check-in wasn’t until 1500 (3PM) so we decided to knock one of the “can’t miss” beaches off of our list.

This was taken from above the beach, on a cliff that you can hike up.  Its only about a 5-10 minute walk up mostly stairs, and a great view of the beach and the houses that look over the beach.

This panorama of Piha Beach makes it look smaller than it really is, but its a nice large beach, since there is about 2-3 times more beach to the north (right) of that big rock on the right side of the picture.  Its also the same place you can climb up and get a nice view of the beach and surroundings.

We highly recommend coming to Piha Beach if you are in New Zealand and you are adventurous.