Towards Coromandel – “An (Un)Expected Journey”

We were sad to be leaving our hosts in Keri Keri – as Hoff mentioned, we’d had five days of amazing food, great activities and most importantly, real beds. However, it was time to head south so we loaded Kitty, said our goodbyes, and hit the road once again. We had quite a punchy first stint to get done – almost six hours – to get us down and around the corner from Auckland and into the Cormomandel peninsula. After stopping to pick up some food supplies and more camping equipment – we decided that we couldn’t cook on my tiny little stove for the next six weeks so needed something a bit heftier – we found ourselves on the outskirts of Auckland once again. We’d timed things to perfection and got stuck slap bang in the middle of Friday afternoon rush hour, so we ended up bumper to bumper in gridlock for quite a long time, listening to crappy local talk show radio (Kitty’s radio, along with all the instructions being in Japanese, only goes up to 89.0 on the FM spectrum which is the lower end for most western countries and usually where they stick all their dross). We finally got back out into some clean air when we were long south of Auckland and made it to Cooks Cove, our stop for the night, where we paid through the nose for our campsite (to be fair to them, it was a nice one, but ridiculously expensive nevertheless). However, it had a decent kitchen and a huge fridge freezer (important things for the intrepid car camper) so it suited us perfectly. We cooked up a portion of pre-made chilli, washed it down with some beers, and scoffed a line of chocolate each for pudding, and then retired to our air bed for the night.

After a fairly comfy night on the air bed (it was still to find its groove so was deflating slightly as we slept, which meant we usually woke up bunched together in the hole in the middle) we headed off to Cathedral Cove. A short walk along the coast, it gets its name from the amazing natural arch formation right through the rock that links up two beaches. I can imagine that at sunset, when the beaches are empty and the light glorious, the view would be spectacular. As it was, the beaches were full with selfie taking tourists and it was a bit overcast, so we snapped a few photos and left. Hoff and I have realised that 1) we don’t really like cities and 2) we don’t really like other tourists, so anywhere that is really busy we end up skipping by and looking for quieter places instead. Therefore we ended up at another little cove further back along the track called Stingray Bay. There we found a place on the rocks to have lunch – the tide was in so the beach wasn’t there, hence the lack of people – before we wandered back to Kitty and jumped in the car, aiming for Hot Water Beach.

As the name suggests, HWB is a beach that has a natural hot spring coming out of the sand and right into the sea. It’s only accessible at low tide and we arrived soon after high tide, however we managed to dip our feet in the sand and almost burn our toes off in the scorching, volcanically heated water. It was a weird thing to see and feel, but we decided not to hang around for low tide proper and got back on the road again, this time heading for the Kauaeranga Valley. We’d read about a hike called the Pinncales that was hard to reach and tough to climb, so we hoped that might keep some of the 18-25 crowd away. It’s not that we have anything against them – we were young once – but there’s only so much ‘travelling’ chat you can put up with without wanting to bury yourself in a deep hole or throw them in one. For example, as I write this, another ‘backpacker’ car has just arrived at what we thought was our quiet little campsite off the beaten track. The first occupant has jumped out sporting a top knot, a poncho that was definitely bought for too much money at some dodgy South American market, and a pair of those parachute style trousers you can only buy in south East Asia and were designed solely for clowns and people who are slightly rotund. As if he couldn’t get any more cliche, he then whipped out a guitar and started strumming away. Within thirty seconds Hoff and I had agreed that if they made any noise past the 10pm curfew we’d be round at their campervan telling them to wind their necks in (it’s Hoff’s turn this time; I played bad cop last night to some noisy Italians).

Anyway, back to the Pinnacles. We spent the night in a DOC campsite. The Dept of Conservation does many things in NZ, one of them being the administration of public campsites. It was cheap, nicely located, and too remote for the young noise makers. In other words, it was perfect. We heated up some Spag Bol and got the carbs on board for the hike the next day, and then hit the hay.

The following morning we were up early. No one else had risen and we were planning to be the first on the hill for the 7km climb to the viewpoint. All was going swimmingly until we jumped in the car to drive the 1km or so to the kick off car park. I turned the key and Kitty refused to start. We’d drained the battery the night before changing cameras and phones, but luckily we got a jump start from the Dutch people next to us. They owed us one anyway as we’d kept one of them calm the night before when her two older companions didn’t return in time from their hike, but it set us back a bit so we had some catching up to do. We strode out along the gravel track, which soon turned into quite a steep climb involving large boulders and big step ups. It took quite a toll on our legs but we eventually reached the top and the view was definitely worth it. We could see right up to the sea at the northern end of the peninsula and the panorama was spectacular. We celebrated with a mug of hot tea and some Cadbury’s chocolate, then headed back to Kitty to get on the road again.

We made good time and thankfully Kitty purred like a well fed cat when we started her up, so we got back on the road, Opal Hot Springs bound. We were due to be visiting Hobbiton, the set where they filmed some of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films, the next day. Hoff was super keen to see them and I was quite interested too, so we picked the nearest campsite to the tour location and hoped for the best. It turned out to be a gem, with the campsite having its own hot baths. It was a perfect way to relax and soothe our aching muscles from the days exertions. After a lovely dinner, we cracked open a bottle of the wine we had brought over from Argentina. It tasted just as good as if we had been drinking it in the vineyard itself, and we almost polished off the whole bottle in one sitting. We saved ourselves a glass for the next day but had a great nights sleep – the fresh air, hot baths and wonderful wine being a perfect sleep aid. We needed our rest as the next day we were off in search of Hobbits, but I’ll leave Hoff to tell you that story.