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Published: March 13th 2008
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Silver tree fern
I love unfurling center pieces... After spending 3 fun days in Rotorua (I HIGHLY recommend the Rotorua Museum of Art and History), our 2 families decided to explore a bit further north, taking the road up past Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty and up into the Coromandel Pennisula along the Pacific Coast Highway (which must be the OTHER Pacific Coast Highway because everybody knows that the original PCH goes down US-101 from Washington to California.)
Turns out this is a pretty winding road, and, for the first time since I was a kid (and my dad was on a bender to make it from Oregon to Wisconsin and refused to stop the car for any bodily needs), I threw up in the car. That's how winding the road was. Despite that, it was great trip! I absolutely love the fern trees called the Black and Silver Tree Ferns. They are large trees that unfurl these wonderful fern leaves - they line the road along the Pacific Coast Highway and are magical.
We made it up to Hahei, a great little town whose
website says "welcome to paradise" and it's not far off. It sort of reminds me of Gearhart, Oregon. Dave, Karen, Steve
and I were driving without any major agenda and didn't have any reservations for lodging, and, it turns out, making reservations is a good idea. That said, we eventually got ourselves in a nice B&B whose proprietor, Mark, had room for us for just one night and allowed our kids inside despite his clear concerns about...kids.
The next day (after Mark cooked us from fried "eeegs" for breakfast), we set off for the town of Coromandel. After another winding road (this time I took ginger pills), we landed in this sleepy little town, whose major attraction is the very sweet Driving Creek Railway, billed as "New Zealand's only narrow-gauge mountain railway along with a working pottery and wild life sanctuary."
Now that's quite a mouthful, but essentially the story goes that the founder, a pottery guy who bought the land to support his pottery ambitions, built the railroad for better access to his clay. Evidently he just kept on building more tracks, and other artisans and buddies joined him and now "innovatively designed trains takes you through replanted native kauri forest and includes 2 spirals, 3 short tunnels, 5 reversing points and several large viaducts as it climbs
up to the mountain-top terminus." (as per the
website .) The "mountain-top terminus" is this cool building called the "Eyefull Tower", (ha ha), and has a spectacular view of the Hauraki Gulf. It's just SO original, so from-the-heart, and so very charming that our 2 families, with kids ranging from 5 to 13, had a great time.
Once back to Hahei, we found ourselves another play to stay, this time at the local
Hahei Holiday Resort , which found us some very sweet "comfort cabins" located just a few yards away from the beach. The kids found a great tree swing to play on, and Dave, Lucas and Noah had a great time playing Frisbee.
The two GREAT things to do around local Hahei are 1) hiking to Cathedral Cove and 2) going to the Hot Water Beach.
So we woke up one morning and went on a lovely Sunday stroll out to the gorgeous, fabulous and very picturesque Cathedral Cove. It was a warm, sunny day and the water was all sparkly and summery. The kids played in the water, the sand, and all around it is a terrific place to see. The hike back up to the
parking lot was a bit challening for Ana, so Steve put her on his shoulders (something he hasn't been able to do for a while with Grace!) and we all cheerfully made it up the hill, just in time for ice cream!
The second stop of the day was the Hot Water Beach. This is an amazing place; the water is heated waaaaay down below by a geothermal spring and comes filtering up through the sand at very specific spots on this beach, about 8km from Hahei. People from all over come, shovels in hand, to dig into the sand to create their own spa pool.
This being a Sunday, there were plenty of people with plenty of shovels, and we managed to find a spot which had the perfect temperatures. The pool next to us on the right had some water that was a bit too hot, which didn't seem to mind the drunk Kiwis who were lounging in it with their beer cooler, but when they staggered away and some college girls stepped in it, they yelped and fled to cooler waters.
This was our last night together with the HAndersons - we were sure
of it this time because we had a plane to catch in a little more than 24 hours. We had a little farewell dinner together, and to cap off the evening, got into the car and drove to a crappy hotel in Thames which placed us about one hour away from Aukland for our last day there.
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