When we went to New Zealand...: Happy New Year!

Talk about ringing in the New Year the right way! I wanted to do something... ANYTHING... to get us out of this house for the New Year... even though all of our flatmates were out of town. I just thought it would be nice not to be stuck at home. So I went online to BookaBach.co.nz and started looking for little vacation houses to rent for 1 or 2 nights. Luckily, one of the first ones I found, out in Piha, had an opening! Its a bed and breakfast called the Piha Exquisite, and I was able to work with one of the guys that runs the place, Aaron, to find ourselves a room. We were going to be in one room, but a big group of people (Korean we think?) came and had taken all of the rooms in the main house, but one. So we ended up with that one... but the room is attached to a SEPARATE bach, which we also got to take over! So its like, we had our own private kitchen, private bedroom / bathroom, living room, and deck all to ourselves! Not all of it was furnished, but thats alright. We ended up spending most of our time over in the main house anyway. We rented a car, and thankfully Kyle drove over to Piha (talk about some narrow roads out there! Hes a lot more confident than I am, though I will be learning soon when we buy a car).

This was one of the craziest, LARGEST homes I have ever seen. Well, ever been staying in at least. I mean the place was just nuts. And the view was to die for. RIGHT over Piha staring at Lion Rock. We felt like celebrities for a night! There was a pool table, and all of the walls slid open to these MASSIVE decks that you could go out and sit on. Could not have asked for more.

Kyle, enjoying the view

Attempting to prepare our dinner on the malfunctioned grill to the Left..

That WHOLE glass wall on the R side opens up..

This is the view out the back of the house.

Literally facing Lion Rock.

Our room! Again, with a view of the beach

This was the separate private kitchen / bathroom down in the bach that we had to ourselves

Other side of the bach. Those stairs go up to our room, and then through our room, you get into the main house.

That big house there at the top of the photo? Yea, thats where we stayed!!

There were a couple little flubs when making dinner, which was the only down side. We had gotten steaks to grill for dinner, but the grill didn't really work, so we ended up having to finish them off in a pan, couldnt get our tomato sauce open cause there was no can opener... ah well. In the end we ended up with steak and pasta for dinner either way. We JUST barely caught the sunset too with our dinner. It was so sweet, we sat out, the two of us, on this little table with our dinner and wine, right on this MASSIVE deck watching the sunset over the beach. Perfect. :-)

Beautiful!

Later on we hung out with the two guys that run the place, who was SUPER friendly, and really young. Seriously, these guys were like, mid-20's and running a B&B whose RENT alone cost them like, $6,000 a month. Insanity. And they were great. Both of them were like, half Swiss, half Kiwi. Funny combo :)

So right before midnight, the guys suited up with guitars, and led a few of us (me and Kyle, and another couple of a Russian guy and his Kiwi girlfriend), down to the beach to countdown to the new year. It was DARK as hell too! No lights out at Piha! Haha. So we headed down by the light of the "torch" (flashlight) on the one guy's phone. It was stellar. Standing down under the stars on the beach at midnight. :-) SO cool. They played some nice music for us too! And heres the crazy part... there was a HUGE fire going on at the top of the ridge down from our house!!!!! No worries, it was pretty far down from where we were, but I mean a RAGING fire! The alarms were going off and all that. Luckily it didn't spread, and the firemen were able to get it out pretty quickly. We felt terrible thinking it was someone's house. Turns out, some people lit off fireworks at one of the scenic outlooks along the road, and one misfired out into the bushes, lighting them on fire. Fortunately, nothing was damaged but the brush, but man it was crazy to watch!

So, Happy 2011 everyone! We were some of the first in the world to see the New Year come in. Cool!!!! Then, off to bed with us. Wanted to get up and explore the beaches the next morning.

We got to hike down to Kitekite falls the next morning, after a stellar breakfast made by the B&B guys with REGULAR DRIP COFFEE (which made Kyle very very happy since Espresso is the caffeinated drink of choice over here). The falls were awesome, bigger than I thought too! So we took lots of photos there, and then headed back over to Piha Beach to climb Lion Rock.

Awesome!!!!

Onward up Lion Rock:

pretty sweet panoramic that came out of Piha!

Top of Lion Rock! Well, at least as high as you can get :-)

Awesome Maori Statue hanging out up at the top, looking out over the land.

Ahhh Piha.

Then, we headed out to a new beach called Karekare, just further down the road. That was pretty epic. Now THAT beach could have been in the Lord of the Rings for sure (no, it wasn't). haha. And you can fish for green lipped mussels there too!!!!!!! Just in the sand! We saw a nice Asian couple searching for them and decided to join them for a little bit. We found out you don't need a license or anything, all you need is to not take more than 50 per person home at any one time. I will be returning to collect some :-D. Especially if we have guests come to visit!!! (Mom!)