Submitted by Danielle Ford on the 2020 winter session study abroad program in Australia and New Zealand sponsored by the Department of Business Administration and the Department of Finance…
I have been in New Zealand for about ten days now and have seen many beautiful landscapes, but none of them can beat the views at Piha Beach. Piha is a black sand beach on the coast opposite of Auckland about 45 minutes away. Before going to the beach, the group went on an hour and a half long hike to KiteKite Falls in the Waitekere Range, right outside of Piha. This hike led to views of the beautiful waterfall.
After admiring the beauty of KiteKite, we traveled to Piha where we walked onto the black sand beach and admired the ocean and huge rocks surrounding it. After doing a little exploring, we found that there was a path to climb up one of the rocks and see Piha from above. My entire time at Piha felt like I was in a photograph. I never in a million years thought that I could see such beautiful scenes with my own eyes and that they could look even better than they do in photos, but on this day the beauty of KiteKite Falls and Piha Beach made me realize how wrong I was. Pictures do not do landscapes like these justice and my advice to anyone hesitant about traveling is to do it. Go see the scenes that you can only dream of.