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Oceania » New Zealand » North Island » Coromandel » Coromandel Town
November 30th 2010
Published: November 30th 2010
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Auckland to Coromandel
(Well, let’s be honest, Auckland to Coromandel via all suburbs of Auckland SE and SW of the great Route 1 South Highway!)

Whilst picking up the Spaceship© (ie small car masquerading as camper – won’t we all have lots of fun until it rains!) was straight forward, as was driving on the left in a RH-drive car-like vehicle , following our instructions to return to the highway was anything but. Our initial feelings that Auckland was a small city were completely squashed today as we drove through lots and lots of interlinked suburbs (with absolutely no signs telling you how to get away from them) – so that is where the 1.3 million people live!
Finally, and swallowing all pretensions to be an Englishman abroad, I stopped and asked for directions. Five minutes later we were back on route 1, looking for a left turn to route 2 … can navigating around here really be that straight forward?
Re-reading what I write (1984 - Mrs Scourfield – 5 Set 1 taught me well) I feel compelled to add two points in parentheses. [Our Spaceship© is more of a SIDRAT than a Tardis … ie the reverse – smaller on the inside than it appears on the outside, and re-packing out our first campsite has been something akin to what the astronauts must have gone through before an Apollo mission … coincidentally Diana and I had to sign ourselves against Astronaut 1 and 2 on the rental agreement!)]
Second parentheses

Rant over. The drive through the rolling farming countryside of Waikato and around the undulating and zig-zagging coast of the Coromandel Peninsula was quite simply stunning. I had briefed my co-astronaut that Coromandel was NZ’s Cornwall according to one website I had come across. Around each headland we changed our mind … ‘Isn’t it a bit more like Spain’ … ‘No, more like Greece’ … ‘Well, actually it looks like Middle Earth’ …
New Zealand is quite obviously different; such is its relative isolation and comparative youth as an island chain risen from the ocean.

Coromandel Town itself was delightful, like 1950s America but with rugby as the main
topic of conversation at the checkout in the grocery store (and that was the women!) Our campsite, 5km north along the coast at Shelley Beach, is beautifully situated on a semi-circular bay … more shells for W and E to exclaim loudly about! Unfortunately we passed every mussel-shack around the bay before reaching the supermarket and the millions of scallop, mussel and oyster shells that made up the beach had all been plundered before we arrived so we had to make do with prawns in our seafood pasta.

A jellyfish on the beach, a jumping pillow in the campsite and a menagerie of over-friendly sparrows, starlings and ducks investigating inside our van for food have caused the children to rate this, our first, campsite 10/10. Perhaps life in our shrunken camper might not be so difficult after all!




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30th November 2010

Hee Hee
You too got completely buggered going round and round Auckland...! Hee hee. If it's any compensation it's all downhill from now on in - very little choice of roads - just like dot to dot until you get home again. Oh, and find your way back to Space Hopper city. Can we have some internal shots of Spaceship please along the lines of: driving, cooking, arguing, sleeping, washing, arguing. Hot Water Beach tomorrow?... (Snowing again here btw)
1st December 2010

Spaceship Life
As I sit in the darkness, on a picnic table facing out to sea, at Waihi beach ... but with a better wifi connection than I get right next to our home hub in Stourton Caundle ... NZ sells itself well. The origin of Movember (How is the tethered hamster, Giles?) ... a truly multi-cultural society (although I have detected an anti-Welsh bias!) ... a society where this is a week in which men are asked to wear white ribbons to show that they are against violence towards women. The only negative I can find about this beautiful country at the moment is the price of food! Thank you for following our blog - hope that you enjoy the warmth of our photos in the wintry conditions you have! Rotorua tomorrow and then white-water the day after ... The next blog update will hopefully reveal more of life onboard the spaceship - needless to say rain, masquerading as sea-mist, earlier this evening, did cause some degree of panic! Like the early stages of the Titanic going down.. All our love P etc xxx

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