We’ve been in New Zealand almost a week now and are on the road circling the North Island for two weeks. We had a couple of days in Auckland and did all the usual touristy stuff – visited Devenport, Rangitoto and did a lot of wandering the city. Chris has written all about it on his blog (www.rootfest.com) so I won’t double up but here are some of my photos of Auckland:
Rangitoto from Devenport:
Auckland city from Devenport:
Rangitoto wharf:
We’d booked a campervan to pick up at Auckland airport on Saturday morning, but after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with e-mails and phone calls, it turned out that our booking hadn’t made it through the system and the branch didn’t actually have any vehicles available for us to take. Unfortunately, we didn’t find this out until we’d got ourselves to the airport and the lovely campervan company (who will remain nameless but it rhymes with Lucy) left us stranded at Auckland domestic terminal with no wheels and no accommodation booked, and a potential $30 shuttle ride back to the city. Needless to say we were not too amused by this. Chris saved the day by calling another company who luckily had a van for us and also have a free shuttle from the airport – yippee! We had to wait a couple of hours but the staff were thoughtful enough to lend us a car (swanky 4x4 in fact) to pop to the supermarket to stock up on groceries for the trip. We also got an upgraded van and so have ended up in a swanky Britz van complete with shower and toilet! We’re moving up the campervan ladder – from our Wicked ‘shitbox’ van in WA with mismatched crockery and shonky engine, to our Hippie van in Queensland with no space to swing a cat, to our swanky Britz van which we can stand up in and shower in and has 2 gas rings!! It’s so nice to be able to cook 2 things at once :-) And because we’re in low season, Swanky van is costing us less than shitbox van – crazy. So our crappy start to the day ended up being pretty darn good thanks to the very helpful Britz/Backpacker people :-)
So, we eventually hit the road around 2pm on Saturday and drove South and East to the Coromandel Peninsula. We passed through some pretty spectacular countryside and snaked along a pretty narrow coastal road until we reached Coromandel town and set up camp for the night. The views we woke up to were pretty nice:
We had a cheeky bimble around the town in the morning but being 10am on a Sunday, not a fat lot was going on. So we jumped back in the van and drove across the peninsula up and down some very steep hills – complete with picturesque viewpoint looking back on Coromandel:
We next hit Hot Water Beach – which does exactly what it says on the tin. For 2 hours either side of low tide, you can dig a hole in the sand and create your own thermal pool in the sand. Unfortunately we didn’t have a spade or our swimming things so we just watched everyone else:
From there it was a short drive around the corner to Hahei and a walk to Cathedral Cove – a beautiful beach with limestone caves and stacks – easy to imagine it packed with tourists in the summer as the sea was amazingly blue, and there were still quite a few people around on Sunday and one girl even went in the sea (I was wearing a scarf it was that chilly…)
As our van is pretty much self-sufficient, we’re trying not to stay in too many paid-for campsites and so we diverted off our planned route south to a small town called Paeroa (famous for Lemon and Paeroa drink) where our camping book said we could camp for free – yay! We drove alongside a river through a beautiful gorge to reach the town but unfortunately it was a bit dark to take pics. We arrived at the designated camping spot – basically a few parking spaces just off the main road, but it did have power sockets, water and toilets – which is pretty much all we ever use in the proper campsites anyway.
We headed directly South from Paeroa through flat farmland with mountains on each side in the distance. We passed through Matamata, where Hobbiton was set in Lord of the Rings – we decided to pass on the tour as they charge $50 for the privilege of looking at some mounds of grass. We drove on to Rotarua which stinks. I’m sure it’s pleasant enough town, but who could live somewhere that smells of rotten eggs?! Having a steaming bubbling pool of mud in your garden would be pretty cool though.
We made the most of the thermal activity, and stayed in a campsite right next door to Waikite thermal pools which gave us unlimited access to the set of pool heated by a natural boiling hot water spring. It was so nice to lounge around in hot water seeing as we haven’t had a proper bath since leaving home (note: we have had lots and lots of showers – we’re not that stinky).
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