Roam Relax Repeat

February 14, 2020

Feb 10

Took an Uber to Mad Camper store and picked up our wheels, a Nissan mini van converted to for camping – pretty much as advertised. Luckily it has a roof box otherwise we would have had difficulty finding a place for all our gear…maybe we brought a bit too much stuff! As we will be meeting Trish and Alex on Friday the 14^th in Tongariro National Park we decided to not venture too far and pointed the van to the Coromandel Peninsula. We spent our first night in the town of Coromandel at a campsite just outside of town. We arrived mid afternoon and stretched our legs with a short beach walk. We also did some shopping for provisions and generally settled in after our first day of driving on the wrong side of the road. Enjoyed a great meal, happy hour and an evening of reading.

Feb 11

Today we headed to the east side of the peninsula to Hot Water Beach – a place that has geothermal action going on just under the sand at the water’s edge. The idea is, you dig a hole in the sand and it fills with hot water from the geothermal source – quite amazing and really hot! We had fun building our sand hot tub until the tide came in and washed it away. The beach itself was spectacular, approximately 2 km long, we spent some time walking the beach. After the beach we headed to the small town of Hahei for some provisions and a quick look around. Lydia had noticed on a map of the area that there was a macadamia nut orchard close by, so we drove over to have a look. The orchard is at the top of a winding road on a bluff very close to the ocean and has over 1000 trees. The owners have a small shop full of their macadamia products – which we couldn’t resist so we picked up some chocolate covered nuts and macadamia brittle! After poking around the orchard, we headed back to our campsite. We had booked the site for only one night but decided we’d like to spend another day and visit Cathedral Cove just north of the village of Hahei – so we extended our stay for one more night.

Feb 12

Cathedral Cove is best visited at low tide to be able to walk through the natural stone arch that separates two beaches. Low tide was at 4:30pm so we had the morning to fill. Lydia decided to do some beach running and I pulled out our boogie board and fins (loaners from Alex) and spent some time catching rides in the waves. After we finished our morning session, we headed to Hahei. There were a few options for hiking to Cathedral Cove most of them originating in the town of Hahei. We chose to park at a trailhead near the macadamia orchard and hike in from there. Cathedral Cove was a 30-minute hike and once we were on the main trail it was quite busy. We descended into the cove from above and it was amazing – I’ll let our pictures do the talking. After our visit to the cove we returned to camp for supper. It was such a beautiful evening we decided to head down to the beach after dark to take some night pictures of the stars – which are really bright and different from what we see in the northern hemisphere.

Feb 13

Moving on today – with Tauranga as our destination, which sets us up for our run down to Tongariro on Friday. Before our departure though we stopped at a local coffee shop, Hot Waves Café, where Lydia enjoyed the New Zealand coffee culture and Don enjoyed eating a brownie – yum! En route we made a few pit stops, one being the Karangahake Gorge – a defunct gold mining site that is open for hiking. The mine operated until 1933 and they had many shafts and tunnels throughout the mountains around the area – quite extensive and interesting. We got to hike through the ruins of the old mine and explore some of the mine tunnels – pretty cool and nice to get out of the sun as it was hot. The hike we took was called the Windows Tunnels trail – due to the rock cut-outs from the tunnel walls out into the gorge – used for light and ventilation. After our hike we got back in the van for our run down to Tauranga where we hoped to find a campsite somewhere close to the beach. On the route to Tauranga we passed through the town of Katikati, a town of murals and is the avocado capital of New Zealand. One interesting feature of the avocado orchards besides the avocados are the 30-foot-tall cedar hedgerows. Once in Tauranga, we were successful in finding a small urban beach park close to Mt. Maunganui, which is on our hit list for tomorrow before we drive to Tongariro.