Thursday 9 January 2025
Pararaha Valley 2025
I went camping at Pararaha Valley again! This time I didn’t have any of my kids with me, but I went with a few friends who brought their kids. It was once again an excellent trip.
Some of the kids were very young (one three years old) so we wanted to keep the walking to a minimum. We drove to Whatipu car park and walked north to the campsite via Gibbons track. The track has been upgraded and was in excellent condition. The views over Whatipu from various lookouts were stunning on a lovely day. The kids did very well and we got to the campsite in two and a half hours, in time for lunch.
The campsite itself is excellent — I’d forgotten how delightful it is. There are terraced tent sites on the slope of the valley, with the Pararaha stream next to the sites at the bottom of the valley. The stream was just deep enough to be fun for the kids without being dangerous. Apparently there are swimming holes not far up the stream but we didn’t get that far. How heartwarming to see kids enjoying themselves by roaming around the campsite! In afternoon we also went down to the beach and visited the Tunnel Point campsite.
The next day we thought we’d walk back along the beach — the signs say it’s only two hours to Whatipu (the car park presumably) from the campsite that way. That was completely wrong — it actually took four hours. That was quite a walk for the three-year-old, but he did very well. In my experience little kids can walk for a surprisngly long time if you keep feeding them snacks frequently. Despite being unexpectedly long, the walk down Whatipu beach is amazingly beautiful — very lonely and wild. The hills behind the beach are distant, with about a kilometre of sand dunes and wetlands in between in most places. It’s very interesting to see how the dune grasses are colonising the growing beach… awe-inspiring to see how they make progress in such a harsh environment.
The Pararaha Valley campsite hardly had any bookings even during this peak summer holiday time. It’s a truly underappreciated gem, given the Whatipu carpark is only about an hour’s drive from central Auckland. Definitely a great place for family camping trips.
