Bens World Tour: New Zealand: The Rainforest Expedition

Kia Ora.

It's taken long enough, but at last I have set foot outside of Auckland and into rural New Zealand. Sure Auckland is great, but I'm here to explore more than a city and so it was nice to boot up and let the Auckland skyline fade away in the rear view mirror.

Having a car certainly offers a lot more freedom to explore. No, unfortunately I don't have one. But Daniel and Nora have bought themselves a nifty camper van for their journeys around the country. Better still, they have kindly offered to share some of their experiences. It's funny, but just lately I consider them to be best friends ;-) Haha.

So Pauline, Timo and me were sharing this journey with them. We drove for about an hour and came to a small village called Piha. On the west coast looking over the Tasman Sea, the village is completely surrounded by the Waitakere Ranges, essentially a giant rainforest. Here was our first view of the town and the distinctive Lions Rock. The sun wasn't out (as promised by forecasts), but of course we still ended up climbing it!

To get to the rock we had to jump over some water, maybe a meter and a half at its smallest width. I'm sad we don't have a video, but statically with five jumpers we should have known one of us would end up in the drink. But we didn't expect that Pauline wanted miss the jump by enough of a distance to take a bath in it! That was so funny and she was soaked so early in the day. But we all laughed so much. Anyway, here's the ascent, the view from the top and a selfie for good measure.

Between climbing Lions Rock and visiting the rainforest we took a wander on the beach and ate some locally caught fish with chips. Look, here's a shell we found!!!

In to the rainforest we went along the Kitekite track we went. Walking through the rainforest was amazing- like all things the photo's are enough to capture the area. It was a day where I really wish I owned an Akubra hat; maybe one day soon I will. But we saw some great things including undoubtedly the best thing I have seen so far: Kitekite falls. A 40 meter waterfall in the rainforest. I've only included a small handful of the photos I took of it and I could have happily stayed there all day. Wow.

Nearly at the waterfall, but first, I'm gonna take a selfie.

From the bottom of the waterfall you can only see the last 25 meters of the waterfall. But we sat here for a quite a long time absorbing it all.

These two photos are taken from the very top of the waterfall. With the intermittent pools you can't see much of the waterfall. Watch the movie. Ah go on. Go on, go on, go on.

Recognise the leaf below? It's the Silver Fern which appears on many New Zealand logos. I have a feeling I'll be seeing a few more of them soon ;-)

And a picture of the group of explorers.

We were in the rainforest for roughly 5 hours and covered a good distance. We went for one last look at the beach afterwards where we made a new friend. I've been told since that this is a rare thing to see on Piha beach, so we got very lucky. We followed it's tracks as we left and found the leftovers of a fish dinner too.