I've been staying in the little town of Whitianga (pronounced with a soft 'f', it's a little bit bigger than Kaikoura) for about a week and a half now, on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. I hitchhiked over here from the even smaller town of Coromandel last thursday, and decided, being a little short of money, to stay here for a while and get a job. It turns out the second place I asked, a bar in town called The Blacksmith, was desperate for a kitchen hand so I got evening work starting immediately. Very lucky. The first thing that made me want to stay was the coastal scenery. The town is fronted by a long white sand beach, thick with broken shells, but the opposite side of the river is overshadowed by high,
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