Piha

Where it sits. Piha is a small settlement on the Tasman Sea coast of West Auckland, thirty-nine kilometres from the city centre but psychologically much further, reached by a road that climbs over the Waitākere Ranges and then drops in a series of tight bends through rainforest to sea level. The beach is black — iron sand, largely titanomagnetite eroded from the volcanoes of Taranaki far to the south and carried up the coast by longshore drift — and on a hot day it is genuinely too hot to cross barefoot. Dividing the beach into its northern and southern halves is Lion Rock, a hundred-metre eroded volcanic neck that sits on the sand like a piece of stage scenery. Its Māori name is Te Piha, referring to the pattern the water makes around it, and it is a significant site for Te Kawerau ā Maki; the summit track has been closed since 2011 after rockfall.

A coast that takes people. Piha's other reputation is for danger. The bathymetry, the volume of Tasman swell and the rock formations combine to produce powerful rip currents, and the beach has been the subject of a long-running television series about its surf lifesavers. The clubs — Piha and United North Piha — patrol in summer, and the standing advice is absolute: swim between the flags or do not swim. Surfers, by contrast, treat the break as one of the country's best-known, with a consistent beach break and a left-hander off the rocks at the southern end. Winter brings the heaviest swell and the smallest crowds.

On screen. Amazon shot the whole of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power's first season in New Zealand, and this coast did a substantial share of the work. Anawhata, the next black-sand bay immediately north of Piha and reached by its own steep unsealed road, provided the slow-motion sequence in the third episode, "Adar", in which Galadriel and Elendil ride along the shore; the beaches between Piha and Karekare supplied further coastal material for the Númenórean scenes, with the Coromandel Peninsula and the Hauraki Gulf covering the rest. It is worth being precise about what came later, because the production's geography changed completely: Amazon moved to the United Kingdom for the second season, basing it at Bray Studios in Berkshire and shooting locations across southern England, so everything filmed in New Zealand belongs to season one alone.

The other films of this coast. Jane Campion shot The Piano in 1993 at Karekare, the bay immediately south of Piha, and the images of a piano abandoned on black sand under a grey sky are the definitive photographs of this coastline. The Waitākere coast also served the Xena and Hercules series through the 1990s, and continues to appear regularly in New Zealand features and commercials. The appeal is a combination that is hard to find anywhere else: dense subtropical rainforest running to the edge of an open ocean beach, no built development in frame, and a forty-minute drive from a full production base in Auckland.

Behind the beach. Piha is a walking destination as much as a swimming one. The Kitekite Falls track follows the Glen Esk Stream inland for about half an hour to a tiered waterfall with a pool at the bottom; the Tasman Lookout track climbs the southern headland to a view over The Gap and Taitomo Island. Visitors should check track status before setting out, because a substantial part of the Waitākere Ranges network has been closed since 2018 under a rāhui declared by Te Kawerau ā Maki in response to kauri dieback disease, and open tracks require boot cleaning at the hygiene stations at every entrance. Following that instruction properly matters — the disease is spread in soil on footwear.

Getting there and timing. There is no scheduled public bus; the options are driving, an organised tour, or a seasonal shuttle service. The road is steep, narrow and slow, and parking at the beach fills on hot weekends. Facilities in the village are limited to a shop, a café or two, a campground and a surf shop, with no fuel — fill up in Titirangi. Summer weekdays give the best balance of warm water and space. The main beach car parks are level and there is a paved section near the surf club, but the sand itself is soft and deep, so beach access for wheelchair users is limited without assistance.