Coromandel

From Rotorua I got the bus to Thames, a small town on the Coromandel Peninsula, an area or NZ I hadn't been to before so it was good to be going somewhere new. Its a strange place, doesn't look like its changed much since about 1950. I stayed in a small hostel which compared to the rest of the town was suprisingly modern, must have been decorated in about 1970.

The next day I did a walk called The Pinnacles. It was a good walk up through a forest, with a steep section at the top which had ladders fixed to the rock, similar to via feratta in the Dolomites. I was lucky with the weather, made it to the top before the clouds came down and made it back to the hostel just before it started raining.nonetheless and the clouds kept away for us to have a good view from the top.

The next day I wasn't getting the bus until the afternoon so had the morning to explore what little there is to do in Thames. Borrowed an ancient bike for the hostel and cycled to the “Butterfly Gardens”, which only seemed to have about 6 species of butterfly all imported from Asia. After that I had an interesting walk. Most of the descriptions of walks in NZ make them sound really difficult, say you need loads of gear, good boots and will take hours longer than they actually do, so I ignored the description for this walk and set off in sandles. Unfortunatly for once the description had been right, no proper paths, a very muddy track up a steep hill. And when the instructions said follow the stream back down the hill, I hadn't thought it would literally mean that you hade to wade down the stream. But I made it back into the town in time to dry off a bit before getting the bus tro Whitianga, another small town further up the peninsula. Stayed here for a few days in a very nice hostel right on the beach.

The next day I went for a biot of a walk along the coast stopping off at some very nice beaches as the weather was very good. Then the next day I hired a bike and cycled about 20km to Hotwater beach. Unfortunatly the weather had changed and it was puring with rain so by the time I got to the beach I wass soaked. But that didn't matter too much as when you dig a hole in the sand at this beach it fills up with hot water, so you can dig your own spa pool. In some places the water is hot enough to burn you. So this was a bit of a strange experiance. Despite the pouring rain, the beach was still really busy and there were loads of people in waterproofs and with umbrellas trying to dig holes without them getting filled up with seawater.

The next day I just got the bus to Auckland where i stopped off on my way further north