On Saturday 7 November 2015 a group of 10 students from Auckland Institute of Studies (8 from South Korea and 2 from Japan), and myself went to Piha and Karekare on Auckland’s west coast. It was a warm sunny spring day.
Piha and Karekare – $65 per person, full day tour.
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Destination: Piha and Karekare
We left AIS at 10.30am and headed for Piha first. We arrived as the tide was going out, which was perfect for exploring the region to the south of the beach, which is known as ‘the gap’.
Here we scrambled over rocks, looked at sea-life in rock-pools, and I was able to show them many interesting places. We also checked out the keyhole, which is an interesting hole cut right through the rock.
We then went to Karekare Falls for a picnic lunch where there was a wedding group having photos taken.
After this we walked back toward Karekare Beach but instead of going direct to the beach, we walked up a track to a lookout which gave us a great view over the beach.
From there, we went down a narrow track which had lots of lupins, a yellow flower, and finally found ourselves on Karekare Beach. We wandered around the beach for a while, enjoying the sunshine and taking photos. We went back to the van by a different route which took us past some wetlands and we had some more photo opportunities with a Maori carving near the carpark.
Our tour returned to Piha Beach where we walked up a steep, narrow path to Tasman Lookout, where we enjoyed spectacular views and watched the tide coming in, covering much of the area where we had walked in the morning.
Then we walked along another path which took us to another place where looked over the Gap area where we had also been earlier in the day, at low tide.
We returned to AIS at about 6.30pm.
