Wine Tasting and Piha Beach

We woke up this weekend having no idea what we wanted to do to spend our weekend in New Zealand; we looked at a couple brochures on Saturday morning, and decided, last minute, that we would try to go on a wine tour. Wine tours are actually quite popular here, so we thought, that if it was available, we would do that. So we called, and were actually able to go that same afternoon, and even better, it was just Matty and I, and our tour guide John. We even got to customize our tour, combining two tours into one. It was wonderful and so much fun. We started out by going to two different wineries, and had a lot of wine before eating lunch, which wasnt all that good for someone my size...

This is a picture of me at the first winery, and the only picture we took at the wineries. The wine overtook us, and we forgot about the cameras.

This is a poster that was up at that same winery, that shows all of the wine regions of New Zealand and which region is known for which kind of wine. It was fun to see.

This is Matty and me in the shuttle that took us everywhere. We were on our way to lunch here. The nice thing was that the price of the tour included EVERYTHING, including lunch, all the tastings and the scenery.

So, after the first two wineries, we went to lunch at this place called Beesonline Honey Factory Cafe. It was a great menu, and since they are a honey factory, they had a lot of types of honeys to taste, and we even got to see honey bees in action. The picture below is one of the cases of bees that were collecting honey. It was inside too, which was weird, but it led outside, and there were tons of bees everywhere. It was cool to see. There are honeys here that is a natural healing honey, that kills bacteria in the body. Very cool.

So, after lunch, we went to the final winery of the day, and then took off to Piha Beach, which is about a 40 minute drive from the city. By the way, all of the wine was AMAZING, for anyone who may be wondering and we bought a bottle of Pinot Gris, which if you know us, you know we are red wine people, so that really says something about the white wine here. It was great!

So, anyway, after the three wineries and lunch, John took us to Piha Beach, as part of the tour. It was an amazingly pretty beach, and the best part of it was that it is on the west coast of New Zealand, meaning that this was not the Pacific Ocean, but the Tasman Sea. That was really cool to know that we were looking at an ocean that we have never seen before. The sand at Piha is black sand, rather than the usual tan, and Piha had beautiful rocks that are huge and the one below is called Lion Rock. Can you see the Lion? It took me a while to see it, but once you see it, it is really there! Very amazing!

When we got to Piha, John took us on a small hike up one mountain and we were able to overlook the ocean and take some wonderful pictures. The climb up the mountain was also very beautiful, as everything is so green here! Here is another view at Piha Beach.

Matt took this picture of me as we were treking back down the trail, and man, isnt the scenery just beautiful even on this small trail?!?

This is also on the climb up the trail. It was really fun and not too bad of a walk, but I was wearing heels, which wasnt so much fun, but so worth the climb! Also right before we started on the trail, we saw a sign saying there are penguins at this beach, and dogs are not allowed at the beach because of the penguins. How cool is that, that although we didnt see any that day, there are wild penguins at this beach, and we could have easily run into one... wow. We are definitely not in the US anymore.

Here is a picture of Piha Beach while we were still driving down there. I put this one up because you can see the water, but also Lion Rock and beautiful green NZ. This is the NZ we have been waiting to see since we got here. We love it in Auckland, but it was so nice to get outside the city and see the rest of this beautiful country (and we havent seen anything really). But isnt God's creation just incredible? We just love it and cannot wait to go back on our own so we can actually enjoy being on the beach, and climb up Lion Rock.

After Piha, we headed home, and it was tremendous and definitely worth the money. We walked away with some great wine, and directions back to Piha, so it was a wonderful trip.

Thanks as always for checking in with us!

Carla and Matty