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Published: October 7th 2007
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The first place we visited after leaving Auckland, the Coromandel Peninsula, turned out to be one of our favorite areas of New Zealand. It is stunningly beautiful, with rugged coastlines, sandy beaches, and rolling, lush green hills.
Our first destination, since we arrived at the base of the peninsula after dark, was the wonderful Miranda Springs Holiday Park. We were too chicken to try to free-camp that first night, so we spoiled ourselves by staying at the nicest campground in the North Island. To this day, nearly a month and a half later, we still haven’t seen its equal. And we’ve stayed at a LOT of campgrounds. Even better than the immaculately clean kitchen and hot showers was the ginormous thermal pool. We spent the evening (and the next morning) soaking in the biggest hot tub we’ve ever seen - and it was naturally heated. We liked it so much that after spending the following day giving the van a thorough cleaning and running some errands, we came back for another night.
When we finally pulled ourselves away from the hot pool at the campground, we drove straight to Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach is pretty much exactly
what it sounds like. There’s a hot spring that comes up through the sand. When the tide is out, you can dig your own hot tub and soak in the HOT water only a few feet from the freezing surf. It’s invigorating to run back and forth between the two. After an hour or so, the tide came back in and our hot tub was inundated with cold ocean water, so we headed on up the coast.
Our next stop was a short hike to Cathedral Cove, which is a gorgeous beach with a huge natural (shockingly cathedral-shaped) archway through the rock. The sun set soon after we returned from the hike, and we decided to spend the night in the parking lot. We had to ease our way into free-camping - we didn’t have a hot pool, but at least there was a toilet right there. We were a little nervous, since it was our first night free-camping, and we were afraid we would be told to leave. Fortunately, we had no problems, and woke up to a spectacular view of the sunrise.
We drove up the coast, pausing for a leisurely, Shifty-cooked lunch of fresh Coromandel
green-lipped mussels. An aside about mussels in New Zealand: they’re HUGE! And delicious. And insanely cheap (they’re the only thing we’ve found so far that’s cheaper in NZ than in the US). We eat them as often as possible - which is pretty frequent, since nearly every grocery store has a tank of live mussels for $2-3 per kilo.
After a few hours driving on very rough, unsealed (American translation: unpaved) roads, we found our next (free, and therefore not really kosher) campsite on the side of the road overlooking Fletcher Bay, at the tip of the peninsula, and Great Barrier Island. We were shocked to find a spot with an even more spectacular view than our previous one. We arrived right at sunset, and decided to celebrate with a few mugs - Shifty isn’t sophisticated enough for wine glasses - of wine (It’s sooo good here - the grapes definitely deserve a bit of air-humping!). Then dinner, Yahtzee (seriously, thanks Christy!), and early to bed so we could wake up in time for another gorgeous sunrise.
On the off-chance that you’re interested (which you must be, if you’re bothering to read this!), here’s another aside, this time
Hot Water Beach
Ryan digging our hot tub
about the roads… With Ryan still getting used to driving on the left, the extremely narrow, steep, and twisty roads in the Coromandel made driving pretty interesting (and by interesting we mean scary-as-hell). Of course, the locals drive as if the speed limit (100km/h - around 60 mph - no matter what the road is like) is a dare. We do not take the dare - Shifty doesn’t gamble. So it’s been a frequent occurrence to have someone angrily riding our tail as we sputter up the hills in our old, decrepit, diesel-powered Shifty (Ryan is constantly having flash-backs of the Barr family VW Van driving up the hill towards Redmond High). Eventually the tailgating local will have enough of us and decide to pass. Usually on a blind corner. Where the road is barely wide enough to accommodate one car. We have frequent visions of flying over the edge (of course there are no barriers) and plummeting into the pounding surf far below.
Anyways, back to our gripping tale of travel on the Coromandel. After waking up to a spectacular view of the sunrise, we spent the day hiking along the coast at the northern tip of the
peninsula. Though part of our hike took us through rolling farmland, we spent the majority of the time walking through lush forest, rocky outcroppings, and black sand beaches. It was quite a hike - much more strenuous than we were accustomed to (Pittsburgh may be hilly, but Carson Street, with all of its bars, is flat as a pancake). For five hours we climbed up and down, constantly marveling at the beauty all around us. As you can see by the pictures, it was well worth it.
Due to predictions of impending bad weather (which was constantly predicted but never seemed to materialize) we headed back toward civilization rather than camping another night at our beautiful spot. We found a campground in Coromandel town, which has a quaint historic central area. We attempted to have a night out on the town, but our plans were thwarted by a laundry disaster, a cold, and DJ Stormin’ Norman (if only we were making up that name). Instead, we briefly visited 3 unremarkable (except for Stormin’ Norman) pubs and were in bed by 10:30. We’re claiming jet lag.
The next day we left the Coromandel Peninsula in search of more thermal
wonders in Rotorua.
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Grant
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What a hoot!
Love the comments and pictures. You guys should be travel writers, had me laughing the whole time!