Water, water everywhere...

I realized when I was reviewing pictures for this post that we enjoyed various manifestations of water on the day we left Waiheke Island. On the ferry coming back to Auckland, we had this view of the city -

We then headed back over to the west coast, which at this point on the island is only 40 km from downtown. I owe this part of our trip to Steve for doing the research (even as we were in-country) and finding an area I thought we weren’t going to have time to explore. A waterfall was first up, but it turned out to be somewhat of a dud…

… when we got up close. This is Karekare Falls, for those keeping track.

The parking lot for the falls also served the nearby beach of the same name, so we walked out to it, along an estuary…

… until we were going to have to do some wading to get there. We had several more stops, so we turned around here -

I had read about the beach at the nearby town of Piha, so on a whim, I asked Steve to stop and let us check it out. Check out the tiny specks of people on the sand -

Talk about gorgeous…

… and huge -

I kept getting lost in the reflections…

… and enjoying the waves -

It was really hard to leave…

… but guess what? We had more waterfalls to hunt! Paranui Falls was a short side trip…

… from our main quarry of Whangarei Falls -

After getting to the base…

… where I really admired all the greenery, we walked along the river…

… for a couple of miles. We came across some redwoods(!)…

… and a massive sycamore…

… before walking through a forest reserve on an elevated walkway …

…with some seriously tall endemic trees -

Those are kauri trees, which are treasured by the Maori as a sign of the well being of the forest. Unfortunately they are under attack from a disease called “kauri dieback”. Along a number of trails we hiked, we had to clean and disinfect our shoes/boots as we entered and left a forest reserve.

So, one last goodbye from Whangarei Falls -