Day 1

We woke up in our hotel, after having spent the night recuperating from about a day and a half of travel, including 22 hours of flying. The view from the Hyatt was alright.. It was a business-y type hotel but pretty good.

We planned out our first day trip as a drive out to the east.. Depending on the timing, possibly taking in a couple short hikes. Our main target was the Hot Water Beach.

So we set out on our drive. Before getting to the coast, there was one little incident.. There was the first flat, straight piece of road I had really seen – and maybe the only one in NZ.. And I had a guy driving right behind me.. but I was going 118 in the 100 zone, and a cop appeared.. Gave me a ticket for about 120NZD. First day out, first ticket :(.. But i just decided to ignore that, and not let it bother me…

We took the coastal drive instead of the more direct route.. And it was worth it! It was one of the greatest drives I’ve ever done. Whipping in and out of the coast along the water and beautiful shoreline of the Coromandel Peninsula…

.. all while trying to remember to Keep Left, and shift gears with my left hand! Oh and the wipers and turn signal were also swapped – that was probably the most challenging.. Don’t know how many times my wipers came on while I turned / changed lanes 😉  The lanes were crazy thin too.. at times single lane even.

I just wished I had a Porsche!

Once we hit the town of Coromandel, we had lunch and shopped a bit (Michelle had left her Rain Coat at home, by the door). Cute little town with some nice shops.  From there, the road headed inland, and over some ‘hills’ with lots more zig zags… Here is a view back from the way we came.. Coromandel is still in site..

And the view forward, with a look at our little car:

We continued on.. And once we hit the water again, stopped off at a short walk called Cathedral Cove:

The hike was pretty easy, and we figured we should get warmed up for the upcoming 3 day hike into the alps! It was a nice beach too, with some sort of bird family that we ran into. They looked funny with tufts of hair sticking up on their heads. They seemed similar to pheasants or something.  Not sure if they couldn’t fly, or just preferred not to, but they just ran around. NZ Factoid: The only native mammal is the bat.  There are no poisonous spiders, snakes.. No bears, or other dangerous animals.. Just lots of birds. And apparently, millions of years ago, since they had nothing to fear, many of the birds stopped flying here.  The infamous Kiwi bird is a flightless bird (who is also nocturnal) as well. 

We found a few times that birds really didn’t seem to want to fly, even if you were hurtling towards them at 100km/hr. Here is a picture of the ones we saw on this walk.. just before they jumped into the bush.

And of course, here is the reason why it’s called Cathedral Cove:

From there, we headed for Hot Water Beach.. We had to move, since we called ahead that morning to check the low tide times, and we were barely on schedule..

So the Hot water beach is an area of beach where at low tide, it exposes some hot springs. It’s an amazing experience!  Doesn’t seem to be very popular (about 30 people there at the time), which is good, since the area of the hot springs isn’t very big either. In the picture above, the area of the springs is actually just aroudn the corner of the trees in the distance (people are walking to it).

What you do, is dig a hole in the sand about the size of a tub for yourself.. Then, it fills up from below, with really hot water. Sometimes too hot! – so long as you are in the right area. The timing for low tide was at abotu 7pm that day, so it was getting a little dark.. so my pic below isn’t so great, but it gives you an idea.

We stayed there until we got good and wrinkly.. Then drove back home.. On the way, I couldn’t resist stopping on the side of the road just to take in the stars. They were incredibly clear (not to mention mostly stars I’ve never seen before ie. The Southern Cross)

Here is a little film of part of the drive back (that got Mish a little nervous 😉  ):  

We grabbed a quick dinner on the way, and crashed for our second night in Auckland…