New Zealand - Week 8

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Auckland, Coromandel Peninsula, Mount Maunganui

I resumed life as a backacker after just over two weeks with my dad, spending four nights in Auckland. Containing almost a third of the nation's inhabitants, the city is by far New Zealand's biggest and offered the rare experience of being in and amongst shiny skyscrapers. It also had the kind of social (drinking) scene only matched by Queenstown, as our hostel held events every night. I made it out on a couple of pub crawls and met some nice people, including Kieran and Kelly from the South West of England, who were looking to work in Auckland before travelling around the country. I managed to get a good view of the surroundings from Sky Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere, and from Mount Eden, one of several dormant volcanoes in the Auckland region.

I bought the Intercity bus Flexipass (something which could have saved me a fair bit of money, had I bought it earlier) and travelled to Whitianga on the north east of the Coromandel Peninsula. Here, I met Luca and Lisa from Germany and we decided to hire bikes and ride to the area's main attractions, Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. The former is a cove with an impressive arch caused by sea erosion (as I recall from GCSE Geography). The latter is a beach with a natural hot spring that is exposed at low tide. I hadn't been on a bike for about 2 years and I found the ride tough going, with each minor hillock seeming like Alpe d'Huez. There was concern we would miss the low tide window at Hot Water Beach, but we arrived in time (thanks to a hitched lift) to the scene of a large engineering project, in which a large array of pools had been dug. In the end, it worked out well, as we found ourselves a space in a nice warm pool without doing any work and had a good hour to relax before being flooded by the cold sea water.

I travelled on with Luca to Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty, just east of the Coromandel Peninsula. Here, we climbed Mount Maunganui, which gave us a good view of the interesting landscape. The mountain lies at the end of a spit, with beaches either side, a short distance from each other, similar to Haad Rin on Koh Phagnan. While the ascent was painful following the previous day's bike ride, the views made it worthwhile.

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Comments

[Kate Birch]

Last week?
Hi Graeme Looks like the end of the road in NZ. Always impressed by your blog and photos- will be great to look back on. Hope South America is living up to expectations and not too many mozzie bites. Where are you now?And heading? Love KNKNBELXXXXXX

[Graeme Clark]

Thank you! It was great to spend time with Alice and we exchanged a few good tips. Currently in Paraty, an old colonial town just down the road from Rio. It's quiet at this time of year and the weather isn't great so it's an ideal opportunity to get the blog up to date. The mozzies are biting me as I type! xx