(Note — this guest post is brought to you by Heather, to help with some of the end-of-day blog writing)

Today is Christmas Eve in Auckland and started out, like yesterday did, with intermittent rain showers.  Good thing we don’t believe in rushing out first thing in the morning (we are on vacation, after all), since it had ended by the time we headed out for the day.

Our first stop were the black sand beaches of Piha — west of Auckland.  It was about a 45-minute drive through winding hills up to the lookout, which Ryan handled excellently (especially since he was driving on the left side of the road).  After we took some pictures at the top, we drove down to the beach itself, which was incredible.  While all of us had thought that “black sand” meant that the beaches would be obsidian (I was envisioning walking across glittering black diamonds) — they were more like a dark brown.  But the scenery was beautiful, with the rocks jutting from the water and a ton of waves from the windy day.

We next planned to go to a replica Maori village about an hour north of the city, where you could get tours of traditional Maori dwellings and see some performances.  When we got there, there was only one other car in the parking lot.  Not exactly promising.  Turns out that while the website said they were open on Christmas Eve, there was only one person working at the cafe, and the tour guide had apparently taken an off-site break.  So we decided to give up on culture for the day.

Luckily, on the drive to the village, we had passed a South African food and souvenir store, which I was thrilled about, having spent a week or so in Cape Town last year.  They even had my favorite brand of South African breakfast cereal, Pro-Nutro, and the proprietor helpfully explained the origin of it — that it was originally developed for people to bring to malnourished kids in northern Africa.  Still delicious.  We also picked up a ton of biltong — South African beef jerky — after the proprietor decided to give us giant samples of different flavors.  So if we hadn’t driven to the village, we would have never been able to go to the store.

The proprietor then recommended that we check out the town of Puhoi and the cheese factory there.  Of course as soon as we heard “cheese,” this was immediately the plan.  We drove the 20 or so minutes…and the cheese factory was closed.  Makes no sense, because why wouldn’t something be open on Saturday and Christmas Eve?  So we went to the general store in town for more coffee — and to see if it stocked the triple cream Brie that had been recommended by the biltong store proprietor.  It didn’t.

Across the street from the general store was a public park and the entrance to a hiking trail promising a 40-minute hike with a lookout.  We decided to check it out, figuring that at the least we could make it to the lookout and turn around.  Of course, “lookout” implies that one has to ascend to actually see something, which became apparent when we climbed what the Fitbit eventually said was 51 flights of stairs.  It was worth it, though, when we got to the top and were able to see the town of Puhoi below and all of the hills and mountains surrounding it.  There were also some sheep just hanging out on the mountain near the trail.  Overall, the hike was an excellent idea — the weather was sunny and warm but with enough of a breeze not to be uncomfortable.

After descending and trying out the swingset at the public park, we decided to go to the grocery store to pick up some food for a dinner in.  This time, we managed not to buy quite as much random New Zealand food as we had the night before at the grocery store…AND the store stocked the Puhoi cheese factory’s triple cream Brie.  So we got it after all — and it was delicious.  Today’s lesson is that things are not open on Christmas Eve (shocker) but driving around randomly can work out pretty well in the end.