Piha Beach

Piha lies on the west coast of the Auckland region, forty kilometres from the city by a steep winding road through the Waitākere Ranges. The beach is about three kilometres long, divided near its centre by Lion Rock, a volcanic remnant that stands a hundred metres above the sand.

It is the archetypal New Zealand west-coast beach and known nationally for its danger. The Tasman swell arrives unimpeded, the bar and channel system generates powerful rip currents, and Piha has one of the busiest surf lifesaving operations in the country — the basis of a long-running television series that made the beach familiar to people who have never been to New Zealand.

The sand is black and heavy with iron, a legacy of the Taranaki volcanic field carried north by currents; a magnet dragged through it comes up coated. On a hot day it is genuinely too hot to cross barefoot. The surf breaks in several places, the water is dark rather than clear, and the currents are constant rather than occasional. North and South Piha are effectively separate beaches divided by the rock, with different breaks and separate patrol flags; the north end is smaller, quieter and has the track up to Kitekite Falls behind it.

Development is a village of a few hundred people: a store, a campground, houses in the bush behind the dunes, and no hotel. Kauri dieback disease has closed or restricted many of the forest tracks in the ranges behind, and boot-cleaning stations at every trailhead are a normal part of walking here.

Black iron sand hot enough to burn bare feet, a rip that has made this one of the most rescued beaches in New Zealand, and Lion Rock in the middle of it. Swim between the flags and only between the flags. The surf club here has been pulling people out since 1934 and the television series about it exists for a reason.