First of all, merry Christmas to all of you. 🙂 Hopefully, you had a lovely celebration and happy days. The internet connection here isn’t great but at least each of us could call family briefly and wish them merry Christmas.
We’re in Hahei at the moment. Hahei is on the Coromandel peninsula and a sunshine capital. Usually. Right now, it is raining as it was for the last two days.
Leaving Waitomo on Saturday after black water rafting (which is awesome and highly recommended) we went on to Te Aroha. Te Aroha is “famous” for it’s hot pools but it was such a hot day that we put up our tent on the campground at 4pm and went straight into the pool. That was the last sunshine we had.
Sunday, we started our trip up the peninsular on the western side almost to Coromandel town but turned before it on to a gravel road to the eastern side. It was raining alteady at that point and the road turned from gravel to slippery mud. Flo is a very careful driver and it was safe but both of us and the motorbike kinda looked like pigs afterwards.
Passing through Coroglen we stopped at the farmer’s market and had tea, coffee, scones, caramel slice and a freshly squeezed cup of orange juice for the way. The market was awesome, Flo got tagged by the local kids and also talked to a lady who sold German sourdough bread. Stocked up with the bread, fresh cheese and a bag full of plumes, we made our way to Hahei.
By the time we got here, we were quite wet. We pitched our tent at a non-rainy moment and managed to get at least our sleeping bags in dry. We took a little walk along the beach which was quite tumultous. There was a tropical storm at Fiji and the remnants of it hit the Coromandel peninsular over Christmas. You could see it and feel it. It was foggy as hell, still warm and non-stop rain. To the point where Flo and I ended up in the TV lounge to hang out in the dry.
Christmas was, as you may have guessed, quite patchy for us. We started out with missing our families and breaking stuff. I lost a piece of my piercing, Flo ripped off a piece of my motorbike pants and to top it up, our helmets lay in a puddle of water and were dripping wet when we wanted to go for a ride.
Plan was to head to Coromandel Town which supposedly had some indoor activities to offer and eat out, having a nice Christmas meal.
On the first kilometer we had to stop because an accident had happened on the road. Ambulance and police were alreday there so one lane was closed down, creating a bit of a traffic jam. A car had slipped in a corner, gotten on to the oncoming traffic and crashed frontally into another car. By the look of the cars, the drivers should be alright but it gave us quite a bit of respect for the wet roads here. If that would happen to us, we’d both be dead. So we slowly made our way to Coromandel Town.
It is a cute little town completely made up for fishing. Flo bought smoked mussels for dinner and then we tried to find the restaurant we had agreed on. Lonely planet recommended a couple and we decided to head to mussel kitchen. And failed. For some reason we couldn’t find it. Our spirits were quite low, being dripping wet, the garmin sat nav decided not to work anymore, probably because some parts got wet and it honestly just kinda sucked. So we went for the second option: A small vegetarian cafe called Driving Creek cafe. It was lovely! A small cafe, very comfy, with a second hand book shop attached to it, we really liked it. Having hot food and drinks, watching the rain pour down outside with us safely inside now made us feel better. We stayed quite long, had a coffee, tea and the best chocolate cake ever as well and then squeezed back into the wet motorcycle gear. Flo actually posted pics of the place on facebook because it was such a relief and a lovely place on top.
The motorcycle gear was yucky as hell. Also, our in-helmet communication had a short-cut because it got wet and we couldn’t use it anymore. Sigh.
Made it back to Hahei where the weather surprisingly was a bit better. At least it wasn’t raining anymore, just foggy with a humidity rate of about 100%. We decided to take that opportunity and walked 70minutes to Cathedrale Cove, the local tourist attraction which was beautiful even in fog. 🙂 At dinner on the campground we met a very nice Canadian couple and had a good chat with them. Flo gave them our contact details so we might see them again when they have made their way down to Wellington.
That, basically, was our Christmas Eve.
