Tag Archives: Coromandel

Part 4 – Almost a holiday

Having gotten through all my requested watercolours in the Auckland Art Gallery and with many more hints what else might be useful, I tried to switch to the other mode of our NZ time: Holidays. Checking the spots on the North Island, that we wanted to show the kids, I realized that it is summer and we should have booked those way earlier. No Matamata for us now, Flo and I keep that in mind for our way back up to Auckland shortly before we leave. Also, the Waitomo Caves had a three day waiting period in which they were fully booked, whereas Wai-o-tapu has no restriction on visitor numbers per day. Anyhow, the kids needed to see glowworms. So we had a weekend to fill before having a cave tour booked for Monday now.

Here, Flo’s completionistic streak kicked in and he went “let’s show the kids Coromandel!”. Which turned out to be lovely but a heck of a drive along those windy roads. We left Woodturners Cafe towards Coromandel town for some smoked mussels (Flo!) and a surprise pick-up of sausages (Agent of Entropy!). Thus, we now had to have a BBQ sooner rather than later. We kept going but it was late afternoon before we made it to Hahei. Hahei is still my favourite beach spot despite having a miserable Christmas here in the remnants of a cyclone and a completely rainy experience when we stopped here in winter. The kids immediately loved it. There was no freedom camping however and I got slightly worried where we would stay tonight.

NZMCA to the rescue! We managed to talk the kids into abandonning their beach experience which had just started in order to go swimming tomorrow morning and left for a NZMCA POP over the next hill. Which was lovely and also a big hit with the kids who built intricate structures out of pebbles.

I missed out on the swim at Hahei beach due to having to work on my laptop but we left at lunch time and drove to Waitomo. Arriving there, both kids were knackered. Still, the Top 10 Holiday Park came with a pool and it was quite hot so 3/4 jumped back into the water for a second time.

Unfortunately, it started to pour and neither our BBQ nor the night walk to the glowworms seemed to still be viable…

Grumpy kids ensued. Luckily, the weather cleared up right around bed time so we did get to go on the night walk. It was quite the experience for the kids: being in the NZ forest at night (being told to keep the torches turned off) and seeing glowworms.

Very, very tired we returned. Just to have our scheduled cave tour the next morning when we saw more glowworms, this time mostly from a boat in the cave.

Now towards Rotorua and Wai-o-tapu tomorrow.

They were kind enough to let us run our d&d game until 10am, so we returned the favour with an order of second breakfast

Day 8 – Legging it

The tent, frozen, again!

This time the forecast held true. Mostly, that is. We got to ride back the lovely gravel road from far north of the Coromandel in sunshine, that was true. The predicted temperature was slightly off, though: instead of the promised +2 degrees, the frost on our tent and bike indicated it was more towards -2.

We took our time going back, taking ample of photos missed yesterday due to rain or the setting sun. I got my mandatory fording action shot 🙂 Speaking of fords: two local Kiwi bikers on V-Stroms were mighty impressed with my report of “nah, they were not deep, maybe 20 cm” …

The last breather for sanity was once again the Driving Creek Cafe. This time fully in sunshine, no ifs or buts. They even had the fire going … ahhh.

The rest of the day was taken up by a 200 km push to get north past Auckland and a lot of weird people along the way and on the campground. Does Auckland attract crazy?

: We had the beach all to ourselves. Reward for braving the cold

: It looks warm, but the sun lies (a bit) – maybe 5 degrees

: The bay seen from the road back.

: The gravel road goes up and down, but mostly hugging the coastline closely.

: Completely staged action shot. The night before, I just rode through 2 up.

: Pohutekawa tree at Fantail Bay. The road was lined with them.

: Last view back from our lunch spot.

: Another way to deal with ever lawn turning into a swamp in winter: Artificial turf!

: This is where we came from today.

: Camping at Orewa Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, right at the beach

Day 7 – Week-i-versary

Celebrating our first week on the road! Only many more to come. 🙂

Frost just out of Katikati. There was hail left in the ditches, too.

Since we had a lovely warm bed and a breakfast with home-made lemon curd in the morning, we were able to hit the road at 8am. Looking out for the first time in the morning, we realized how cold it must have been in the night: Everything was frozen. This made for some awesome winter pictures on the road and a couple of stops more to warm up hands and stretch next to the road.

The weather forecast didn’t look too bad so Flo and I decided to face Coromandel one more time. Maybe, after that rainy Christmas in 2012, we could see it in sunshine?

Sunshine was lovely and we made good progress up the east coast of the Coromandel peninsula. In Coromandel town we had lunch at the Driving Creek Cafe which is quite dear to us as it sheltered us in 2012 when we got drenched. This time, we arrived in sunshine. Filling our bellies with nachos and hot peppermint tea, a hail storm started outside. Hail is really unhelpful on the road so we waited it out with another coffee.

The weather coming around as we come close to camp

At 3pm, still in rain, we started northwards as we wanted to stay at a DOC campsite at the top of Coromandel. We had a recommendation from Michael for either Stony Bay or Fletcher Bay. Going along and around the coast seemed like the option with a better chance of the sky clearing so we went to Fletcher Bay.

The Coromandel coastline is beautiful. Even in rain and on gravel. The rain stopped before we reached the campsite so we were able to put the tent up dry. We had the whole beach to ourselves, no one else was staying here.