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Published: September 28th 2005
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- FOOD: Dodgy service station seafood, Nigel the chef's most amazing pub grub, our own cooked bacon sarnies on the gas stove.
- AREA: Waihi beach all night session, first night in the van but shower in a nice parent house, deserted and beautiful Whangamata beach, Hot Spring Beach where we nearly froze, amusing road signs, Port Jackson peninsula and stuck in the sand saga. Petrol shortage saga.
- PEOPLE: Lovely locals buying us drinks all night. Such a nice supermarket worker who gave us free food. The word 'eh' in constant use. Nice man who towed us out of the sand. Nice man in the Subway at Thames. Nice, nice, nice people (when we eventually see some anyway).
Wed 27th July: After a few hours of driving and feeling pleased with ourselves (the only mini mishap being the indicator is on the opposite side we're both used to so we kept putting the windscreen wipers on instead), we stopped for some well deserved good pub grub - the seafood basket to share took our fancy. A lesson was learnt here - never order such a dish in a dodgy, roadside pub/cafe with no atmosphere. EVERYTHING was
breaded and the oysters left a lot to be desired. We didn't really fancy being ill in a van with no loo on board so wisely left them.
We made our way to our first stop - Waihi beach and found a suitable parking spot on a layby right next to a pub. Perfect for the one glass of wine before bed. 10 bottles later after having spent the evening chatting with all the locals (no other tourists there as it's winter), appreciating the warmth, the jukebox with a million tracks and the drinks being bought for us, we made it to our van at 7.30am.
Still, a good long night was had and we found out all about how the young people all go off travelling as there's nothing to do in NZ! This was obvious when the barman, Graeme, spent practically all of the 12 hours we were there informing us about how he saved the pub when some teens came in and held it up... 6 months ago. We heard the same story countless times and even had a reconstruction of it. Nothing else to talk about?!!!
Thur 28th: It was so comfortable sleeping in
the back of the van - mainly as the alcohol consumption meant passing out in a drunken stupor immediately and not waking up. Nigel, the chef of the pub, let us use the shower at his Mum's house - ahhh, such a nice house and a nice soap addict Mum who loved to hear about the next 5 months worth of Corrie (they get so much British TV over here).
Then we went back to the pub where Nigel cooked us the best pub grub in the world - why didn't we come here yesterday to eat instead of that other awful place?!
We only managed one hour of driving today - up to Whangamata, the next town. The weather was not the best - windy and rainy (that's our excuse for only driving 1 hour). We found an excellent place to park next to the beach and then encountered more Kiwi hospitality - the woman in the closed supermarket opened up just for us, gave us free pears and chatted away - so nice. I think we probably went to bed at about 8.30pm!
Fri 29th: Up early to see sunrise and to discover what a
beautiful area we'd parked in - a long stretch of deserted beach with just a few nice little beach homes lay ahead. After making delicious bacon sandwiches on our little camp stove we went for a walk on the beach and then chatted to more lovely locals in the town (they say "eh" a lot!!!) before heading off to Hot Water Beach, driving up the Coromandel Coast.
Apparently at this beach, you can dig a hole which fills up to create your own natural thermal bath - we didn't discover this phenomenom as it was bloody freezing so we just sat and read for an hour with all our layers on. Unsurprisingly we had the beach to ourselves.
We continued up to Port Jackson, stopping along the way a few times to appreciate the beauty of this coastline (so good to have the van to do this) but we didn't see any kiwis. One stop was at Whitianga where Nigel the chef's aunt and uncle work in a petrol station, so we stopped off for a little chat with them.
We were very amused (and distracted) by the road signs - "Old People Crossing", various warnings about drunk driving,
distracted driving (with huge signs to distract you), the number of accidents there's been on various stretches of road.... but also lots of "Thank you" signs if we had to slow down for roadworks - so very polite.
It was getting dark but we just saw sun set across the rugged coastline and we figured we were very nearly at Port Jackson so would continue. It was at this very point that the roads suddenly became very bumpy, narrow, winding, dark, no other cars passed us and all the possums decided to come out to play. Stupid things walk so slowly and do not move out of the way so we were surprised when we thought we'd hit one. I got out of the car to check and got straight back in when thoughts of "I know what you did last summer" film sprung into my head!
After about 2 hours we made it to the top - Port Jackson.... where we sat in the dark straining to just about see the sea and eating our sandwiches. Then our first girlie driving moment occurred - we were stuck in the sand. SAND, by the sea?!!
We hadn't realised we'd
driven so far up to the sea as the gravel and sand merged so smoothly. Deeply stuck we trekked up to the nearest (and only) house - trying to push horror story scenarios away. But we had no need to worry as the man living there was very friendly, not patronising and had a truck to tow us out (he said it happens all the time). We were so grateful and gave him a half eaten bar of choc, some dollars and the free beanie Graeme the bar man had given us.
It was getting very late and we were supposed to be driving back to Auckland to stay with my cousin Stuart. But after driving back along the bumpy track where you have to use all your concentration, we were both so tired it was stupid to try to drive more. So we figured we'd make it to the town Thames and drive to Stu's tomorrow.
Girlie moment No. 2 - the petrol light came on and all the petrol stations were closed/ non existent. THANK YOU van for making it to Thames just about without totally running out.
Thames was a town based along a long, straight road and was dead. Our luck continued when the nice man in Subway let us in for a sandwich and then we found a pub to relax in and unwind!
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