Blogs from Hot Water Beach, Coromandel, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania

Did very little in Auckland, the road system is so confusing we got lost every time we went out. The weather wasn't great either and we were both tired. We spent all of Saturday laying around. Monday we packed up for our last week and headed north. Of course we got lost trying to get out of Auckland! We headed up the Kauri Coast towards towards Dargaville stopping at the kauri museum. Kauris are trees that grew here in mass many years ago, they were logged almost to extinction. Some of the trees are over 2000 years old. The trees also produced sap or resin called gum that was used in linoleum in the 1900's. What they found was 2-3 dead kauri forests buried in swamp areas and gum reserves buried as well. Most of the ... read more

Monday was spent travelling from Paihia to Coromandel through more stunning scenery. We stayed in the YH in Coromandel Town which was a caravan shaped log cabin with a toilet block and kitchen facilities. Tuesday morning we went on the Driving Creek Railway, a narrow gauge railway which zig-zags up the side of a densely forested hill to a height of about 175m above sea-level. This has been the life's work of one man, a railway enthusiast, who began the project in 1974 to source clay for his pottery business. Under pressure from the bank to repay his loan he opened his railway to the public. The company now employs 16 staff but the owner, Barry Brickell, 79, doesn't take a salary but lives on the sale of his pottery! ... read more

We left Auckland for the beginning of our trip southwards. We made a few little stop offs along the way and eventually got to Coromandel for hot water beach at around 1:30pm. Once there we grabbed a spade and headed straight to the beach to dig our own little pool of hot water to sit in. Unfortunately when we got therwere tide was already in pretty far so we started digging but every time we got close to making a pool the tide kept coming in to the pool and making it cold. Eventually a man who had been there a while offered us his pool and we all jumped in as quick as possible to get a feeling of the hot water From under the sand. We sat there for a while burning our bum ... read more