Advertisement
Published: January 25th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Coromandel to Christchurch - 1st to 2nd Jan
The first day of 2010 began with a bit of a lie in but after we had rose we were welcomed in the kitchen by scrambled eggs on bagels which Raewynne had prepared for us, which was just what the doctor ordered to prepare us for the day ahead. We had decided that we were going to make our way back to Auckland in time for our flight back to Christchurch (on the South Island) the following day, so we began to pack our bags ready once more for our onwards travels.
Having packed and eaten, Raewynne offered to take us for a drive to see where her Great Grandmother lived and the school she used to teach at as well as seeing some of the Coromandel coast line and other points of interest which we kindly accepted. It was a beautiful drive across to the Coromandel coast line and really nice to visit the home and school of relatives from my family tree, it really is amazing how far family connections go. The Coromandel was an amazingly scenic coastline and although we only saw a very small part of it
we were overwhelmed by its beauty and felt very lucky to be able to see it. After taking in other local sights including the gold mining region where gold was still being quarried and stopping for a spot of lunch where we saw some surfing Santa Christmas decorations and the lampposts. We then popped in to have a drink with Raewynnes sister and brother-in-law.
Bowks writing now…
Time was getting on and we had another hitching journey to undertake so we asked Raewynne and Colin to drop us at a suitable hitching place so we could begin our journey back to Auckland. (Thanks Raewynne and Colin for your great hospitality, it was lovely to meet you both and you went out of your way to make our stay enjoyable.)
After about 15 minutes of waiting we began to wonder if a sign would aid us so Doddy popped into the bar we were stood outside to see if they had any sign making materials. Meanwhile, I waited outside with my thumb poised and within 2 minutes a guy pulled up but was going the wrong way. A minute later another guy pulled up who was going straight
to Auckland, great news, although I don’t think he thought that when I said would just go get my boyfriend! The guy was a tattooist from Auckland and on the way chatted about our travels and the increasing trend of people getting tattoos in NZ. He dropped us off right outside the hostel door and even gave us a help up to our room with our bags. We stayed at the same hostel because of its good location and were put back in the same smelly dorm room but it didn’t matter too much as we knew we wouldn’t be in it too long. That night we had another wander round Auckland before retiring to bed very sleepy.
In the morning we took a visit to a small market but resisted the temptation to buy anything. We then thought we would check out the Auckland Museum as they had a Maori show on. However, on the walk down there we spotted a big tennis arena with some games going on. We went over to find out more and to our surprise we found out the ASB tennis qualifying rounds were on and it was free to watch, so we
took our seats in the stand and enjoyed a couple of hours of tennis, some of which was quite a high standard.
Before heading to the airport we had a look in a few vintage type shops and then caught the bus to the airport. We had decided to fly down to Christchurch as it would take a lot less time and would actually work out cheaper than going by bus and ferry. The flight went fine and we landed at around 8.30pm to get onto the bus straight to Martin and Fens (the couple we’d couch surfed with a few weeks earlier). They had said we could stay with them again and it was great to catch up and hear what they had been up to over the Christmas and New Year period. They were keen to hear what we had been up to and when we told them we were thinking of doing the a bungy jump in Queenstown Martin produced photos of the one he had done in China to scare us even more!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.055s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0346s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb