Mud, lots of mud.

Daylight savings time has officially occurred in New Zealand, which means that the weather has turned for the better.  The winter rains are now turning to sunshine and beach weather.  The better weather calls for hikes and long walks on the beach.  On Saturday we figured that we would take advantage of the better weather and head to the Waitakere range.

There’s a beach just south of Piha called KareKare that has several nice hikes and some amazing beach areas.  We decided to hike the Mt Zion Hill Track and thought it would be a really nice, scenic hike.  In retrospect, I probably should have researched it a little more.  Four and a half hours and 16k later, we made it back to the car with several extra kilograms of mud clinging to our boots.

The hike was a decent challenge as it takes off straight up the cliff line, stopping for a waterfall along the way, and then a little trouble ensued.  Since it’s only spring here and it has been raining quite a bit, half of the hike was covered in mud, which was not an easy task with James on my back.  Maggie didn't get any pictures of the mud because we needed all hands free to grab any branches available along the trail to keep us from sliding down the path.  We finally got past the mud, through wetlands via submerged boardwalk,  and to the beach, which had some beautiful black sand dunes that led out to the ocean.

Lance carved this for me when he hiked this a couple weeks ago so I could find it when we did it together.

James had a fantastic time running around the sand dunes and throwing sand on both Maggie and me.  He is truly in his element rolling around in the sand.  He had a really great day and enjoyed spending time on a beautiful NZ Beach overlooking the Tasman Sea.