Blogs from Coromandel Town, Coromandel, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 4

Today we said goodbye to our wonderful cottage in Hahei and packed up for our trip across the peninsula to the town of Coromandel. The route isn't exactly major highways and we took the “309” road (which turns to a dirt road after a few km) up through the hills. Like many of these smaller roads, the 309 narrows considerably and hangs on the edge of steep hillsides. We stopped at a place called the Waiau Waterworks - an really cool combination amusement park - science lesson - art project. The owners must be artist turned Engineers (or the reverse) as the park is full of kinetic artwork that makes use of the stream that flows through the property. The park features a huge waterworks clock, an amazing zip line (known here as a flying fox) ... read more

Alice thought it a little strange to be flying from one country that we were only visiting to another, in a way it was but as they both spoke English we felt quite comfortable with it. So as we flew in from San Francisco to Auckland and crossed the Date line we arrived at a relatively quite airport in the wee hours after not getting too much sleep. On reflection back, New Zealand has been one of our least prepared stops to date, not counting the one night in Madrid we had on the ad-hoc with Keely and David. I think it was because i only ever thought of the trip as being a means to an end, an extended stop over between flights, so there we were just days into our big adventure and we ... read more

My time in New Zealand is sadly over, but having heard so many great things about the Coromandel Pennisula, I made sure to fit in a visit before I left the country. With only 4 days remaining I took a ferry from Auckland to Coromandel Town and organized a day to hike the Cormandel Walkway, which is at the tip of the pennisula and goes from Fletcher Bay to Stony Bay. I wish I could post all of my photos here, it was absolutely beautiful. I was fortunate to have nice weather and a lovely English couple to walk with. Along the walk we stopped at a little bay for lunch and decided to search for some shells. I found a beautiful cat's eye shell and then became obsessed with finding more just like it. I'm ... read more

He's a 7 week old English Springer Spaniel. Or "Careve Claude", his pedigree name. (I wanted "Careve Claude d'Argaville" but was overruled) After a couple of weeks he is mostly well behaved, chipped, partly innoculated, and unremittingly cute. We are very proud to announce that he can climb stairs, tho not yet descend them. All single bloke blog readers take note - puppies are babe magnets. He gets alotta respect. All is well here. We are in the Coromandel, where the beer is cold and the weather mainly fine. Nick S dropped by sailing mid-week and after some rendez-vous difficultulties based on ambiguous local placenaming conventions we got together for dinner and an excellent sail with Mrs S and some friends of theirs. Andrew G is here also this week. Shootin' some trouble. I start work ... read more

Hi Everyone, When we left you we were in Kiakoura. This is the whale watching capital of NZ, and we duly boarded a very fast catamaran to go out finding whales. After 20 minutes underway we saw our fist whale, a young male sperm whale surfacing after a dive. They are quite remarkable creatures to see up close especially when they lift thier tail before diving. Sperm whales routinely dive to depths of 1000m to feed on squid and deep sea fish. This wasnt our only first that day, fpr the first time in our various travels both Claire and I got seasick! The swell on the ocean was big that day, and by the time we reached land we were both looking a little green. The East coast of the South Island was also the ... read more