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Published: February 9th 2007
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After leaving Rotorua we cruised up to Taurange on the shores of the Bay of Plenty. It was a pretty sizeable town/city and it's funny how the further North we get the more we enter denser civilisation!
A couple of things we haven't done yet is give you an overview of NZ prices. A litre of unleaded here is about 50p currently, and Diesel approx 30p. Food is definately cheaper than Oz - something which has suprised many Kiwi's that we have spoken to. Whilst we haven't eaten there (I Promise) McDonalds is about half the price of the equivalent meals in the UK. There is also many more Asian and Polynesian people in the local community the further North we head.
We headed on quickly from Tauranga as their wasn't much to see or do and headed on up to Whangamata and Whitianga. The main two things we had headed up the Coromandel Coast to see were Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach.
We used Whitianga as our base for a nights stay, before heading on to the sights the next morning. Whitianga is a really lovely little coastal town, and we chilled out for the night
in a couple of pubs and watched some of the Rugby 7's being played down in Wellington.
We did have a funny experience at a chippy in Whitianga - many older people in NZ are so grumpy and don't seem to know how to sell their products! We almost had a row with the owner of the chippy over his poor sales skills, lack of sauces, forks and napkins. He thought we were bonkers asking him if he had any salt! He was so proud of the fact that his useless little chip shop couldn't provide anything other than literally just fish and chips!
We did get the sprat line out and sat on the harbour side with a beer but couldn't catch bugger all. Actually thats a lie, we caught a star fish! We did look pretty amateur next to all the pro's with their mega carbon whopper rods trying to catch snapper. To be fair they caught nothing either whilst we were there, and were probably looking on in awe at our starfish which must have been a good 3 inches across! I accept your praise of my fearless fishing ability in advance.
Next morning
we got to the car park of Cathedral Cove beach in driving rain. We didn't expect the main feature to also require a further hour's walk round the headland, through rainforest and pouring rain to get there! Nonetheless like hardened Brits we plodded through the rain to Cathedral Cove Beach, and it was pretty cool when we got there. The reason it is called Cathedral Cove is that the beach is bisected by a large limestone sea arch which you can walk through. The bay and surrounding beaches are also a marine reserve and I braved the cold and rain for a few minutes to check out the snorkelling in Gemstone Bay (It wasn't great - there was too much kelp!).
After spending some time wandering around the Marine Reserve beaches we grabbed some lunch and drove down to Hot Water Beach. This was probably the most nuts thing that we have seen in our time in NZ. Hot Water Beach is a beach on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, approximately 12 kilometres south east of Whitianga. Its name comes from an underground hot spring which filters up through the sand between the high and low water
tidal reaches. Within two hours either side of low tide, it is possible to dig a pit into the sand and have it filled with hot water from the spring. We weren't sure if we'd found the right place until we started walking down the beach and could see the mass of people going mental with spades in the sands. It was either a thousand strong pack of dog walkers burying poo, or the right spot.
What we weren't expecting was the heat that came out from the springs! In certain spots you only had to push your toe into the sand to literally get scalded! It also resembled a kind of amateur trench warfare - people were defending their little sand walls and resultant sand baths with their lives and their spades! Some of the evil and dirty looks you got from going too close to someones wall was hilarious! I took great delight therefore in knocking some over!
After the madness of HWB we left the Coromandel Peninsula and headed to a tiny place called Miranda for the night, and a campsite with another of the now obligatory thermal mineral pools in their grounds. We also
seem to be starting to offend a lot of the oldies with the van - they don't seem to see the funny side and many women especially seem to want to chase me down the road with a big stick. I ended up getting a late night after watching the Oz-NZ cricket match with some of the locals, I've given up on watching England's amateurs play - everytime we have watched England their body language shows that they couldn't give a toss wether they win or lose at the moment!
It seems a lot of people aren't getting the web page update messages at the moment - apparently travelblog have had a few issues with their mail servers don't worry.
(Marta from Barcelona - thanks for your message finally (!) hope you and Jay had a great time. Send us your email address we only have Owen's!)
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Charlotte
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A quick one from me!
Hi Guys, Like the pictures! Good to hear that it is cheaper in NZ than Oz. Thank goodness for that. The prices here are killing our budget. It's all good fun though, and you only live once so it's worth it! Oh, and Dan, what are you on about with England and the cricket. The end of the recent England V Australia game was great... and we won!! In fact, England have beaten Australia the last two times we've played! Dyce and I are getting less stick from the ozzies now (in fact we aren't getting any now!) Take care both of you, Charlotte xx PS - We're going to Alice Springs tonight so I'm guessing we won't be able to read your blog ... look forward to having a good catch up on it when we arrive in Cairns. Any tips for then?!