Coromandel Peninsula, Mercury Bay and Rotorua

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Blog Entry 3:

Its 2:30pm on Sunday, Feb 6 in Wellington, watching the Leafs play the Sabres (Now 4-0 Buffalo) taking a day of detox after the Rubgy 7's this past weekend, i'll try and sum-up the past week or so. Loving life out here at the moment!

Jan 26th - Went back to Auckland for one night after Paihia before jumping on board a new Kiwi Bus in the morning. Stayed at "Base Backpackers Hostel" in downtown Auckland, nice hostel but not very busy on a Wednesday evening, some real skeet organized a pool tournament worth a $100 bar tab (needless to say I went out in the first round as I need to brush up on my pool skills) still managed to get a free beer out of it though.

On route to Mercury Bay - Jan 27th:

Made a stop at The Coromandel Peninsula, literally the most amazing beach I've seen thus far, tides at least 10 feet high, took almost 30 minutes to walk down to it but well worth it (judge for yourself through the pictures). Spent the evening in a very small family run hostel in Mercury Bay (Turtle Cove) Quiet and clean and they even had a backyard bar! Tommy and myself, along with a nice English guy we met "Dave" had some beers until the owner shut the lights off at 11 (he literally pushed a button and the entire hostel went completely black) that was our que to go to bed. Also met some Canadians, finally! Two girls from PEI, I'm pretty much the 5% of travellers throughout NZ who would actually know where that is, very cool, very nice but unfortunately they couldn't make their way on the bus the next morning as it was completely full and the Kiwi buses are in their peak season (maybe meet up with them down the road).

Leaving Mercury Bay to Rotorura - Jan 28th:

Kind of a chilled out day, made a couple short stops along the way but nothing major, eventually arrived in Rotorura which no word of a lie smells like sulphuric acid (the entire town!). Reminds me somewhat of driving to the Ottawa river the past few summers and stopping in Napanee which also smells like a sewage site.

Regardless it must take some getting used too, that evening I went out with about 60 people on our Kiwi bus to a "Cultural Mauri Dinner", very intriguing idea so I thought it would be worth checking out, definitely did not disappoint but I became a little "too" involved in the festivities. On route to the village our driver "Nutta" (yes his name was Nutta) "randomly" choose me as the groups designated Mauri Chief meaning I would be greeting, participating, and generally be the main person interacting with the Mauri Warriors for the entire evening, needless to say I was shit-frightened. The highlight of the evening would have to be myself preforming the "Hakka" in front of about 200 people, now I love watching this iconic performance used by the All Blacks to intimidate their opponents during Rugby matches but it didn't quite look the same while I was doing it, now i'm sure you can picture myself looking like an idiot so I'll refrain from going into anymore detail about it 😊.

Went out to the hostel bar afterwards, stayed out till probably 3am in the pouring rain, loving every minute of it, great people, good night all together..........onto Waitomo @ 7:00am the next morning.

Pictures to come shortly....

S.

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