#beach lyf

[koala-chaser]

Taranaki: surf coast highway Sadly the sunshine did not last forever, the clouds came rolling back in in the evening and by today the mountain was once again hidden from view. I got a few glimpses driving in the morning, but mostly it was well and truly hidden. Instead of heading up into the rain clouds, I decided to stay low and explore the coast, by driving up to New Plymouth and then around the surf coast highway, which runs all around the national park and the mountain. New Plymouth seems like a nice enough town. It's all coastal, but mostly reclaimed land so no beaches at the city centre. There is a big free museum/library building which has some interesting history on the natural life of the area as well as how the mountain came to be so far out with no other hills around it. (Short answer: it was a volcano, it forced its way up and brought all of the area out of the sea with it). There was also some cultural information about the local Maoris and the traditional Maori myth of the mountain (it used to be over with Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe but they had an argument and Taranaki left to head out west, digging the river as he went). I spent a couple of hours there, then headed out around the coast. As I could've guessed from looking down from Taranaki the day before, there was a lot of farmland. The road didn't actually hug the coastline, mostly the beaches were on the edge of the farms, so to get out to the sea you had to take a side road between farms out to a beach, and then drive back inland to get back to the highway. It's supposed to be a great area for surfing, I guess because it covers three different directions (North, South and west) so there's always another beach option. Possibly because of the weather, I didn't see any surfers today! I did see a shipwreck, caught up on the rocks and because it was low tide I could walk all the way out to it. I also attempted to walk out to the west cape lighthouse, but halfway down the track the clouds suddenly decided to spill out all the rain. I got quite wet, but I also got some cool photos of the rainbow it made so it worked out ;)

[koala-chaser]

Coromandel: Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach I woke up surprisingly early, and since I'd promised to say goodbye to my new friends over breakfast I took a morning walk down Opito beach, a beautiful secluded spot. Back at the house, a couple of the kiwis from the South Island were lovely enough to give me their contact details and said I should get in touch if I made it down that way. Everyone was so friendly as I made my goodbyes and headed back out on the road. The drive back to the highway was even more scenic in daylight, but I tried to limit my stops a little since I wanted to make it through two of the coromandel's big attractions before the forecast rain came back in the following day. And with only a few stops, I did! Cathedral Cove is one of NZ's most famous beaches, one that all the tourists have to visit. I'd been assuming that meant it would be easy to access, but in fact it was about a half hour walk from a very small car park. I got lucky in that a car was pulling out right as I was driving in, but other than that all the spaces were full (and this is on a weekday outside of holiday time) so I wouldn't like to see what it gets like in peak season. It was a fairly pleasant walk up over the cliffs, although the majority of the time the view was obscured by trees, until we made it to the cove. Cathedral cove is a very nice beach, with an interesting rock formation and its accessed through a cliff tunnel from a neighbouring beach, which is pretty cool. What seemed strange to me though was how many people went to this one beach, when other than a few features it was the same as all the long empty beaches I'd been driving past. I suppose NZ has a lot of very similar beaches and this ones a bit different, but it's quite small. Worth a look, but not where I'd go to actually spend a day at the beach. It is in a marine reserve, which means lots of fish and animals in the water since the fishing boats aren't allowed in. But the signs all said the snorkelling was best from Gemstone Bay, a small rocky beach much closer to the car park. I did a quick snorkel around, saw a couple of fish swimming around the seaweed, but on a cloudy day the visibility was poor and the water was cold enough that I didn't stay long. I don't think people snorkel off cathedral cove at all, so it remains a bit of a mystery why everyone goes there (although I suppose as with most tourist sites, everyone goes because everyone goes) Then hot water beach! This is pretty close to the cove, a few km down the road. There's two adjacent hot springs, almost buried under the sand, that flow into the sea. They're too shallow and too hot to get into, so the thing you do is get a shovel and dig a big hole in the sand. You channel in hot water from the stream, and cold water comes up through the bottom to create the perfect little sitting pool. I made friends with an American girl called Trisha who let me share her pool in return for doing some of the digging. It was interesting trying to figure out how much hot to get in, and how deep to dig when it got colder the further down you went. She also told me you can only do it at low tide and the hours surrounding it, so I got luckily with when I ended up there (plan your trips!) :) we stayed in until we were almost falling asleep, then it was back in the car for a quick drive back into the forest to an overpriced DOC campground in which I was possibly the sole occupant (spooooky).

[koala-chaser]

Coromandel: Colville to Opito Colville turned out to be as far north as I went on the peninsular. There is a road all the way up to the top that curves around and back down to Coromandel town but I spoke to some people at the camp site who said it's a very tight winding gravel road. Piri has been great on gravel roads to date, but she isn't a 4x4 so I decided not to take a chance on the very long winding road up in the mountains and instead headed back down. The road from Colville to coromandel town is beautiful, tiny little beach settlements with perfectly still sea beaches. Very few people, I'm guessing because it's not summer anymore and most of the houses up here are baches not permanent homes. I didn't really stop in coromandel (again!) choosing instead to stay away from the big towns and head out east towards the next coastline. Months back I was chatting to some backpackers who'd done the road trip and they said that if I ever went to the coromandel I had to check out New Chums beach. It was signposted off the main road, you had to drive through a small 'town' and park beside the beach, then walk around the headland about half an hour across the rocks then up and over to get there. It was beautiful, an untouched patch of coastline with native bush cliffs on one side and the sea wi some very gentle waves on the other. I walked the full length, climbing out on the rocks on the far side to get a view back, met some Dutch backpackers who were collecting shellfish and camping back amongst the bush. I was wandering back, looking for my shoes when a group of locals arrived. I got chatting to one nice man and he said they were a collection of women who'd trained as dental therapists 58 years ago (!!!) in Wellington and still met up regularly for holidays, and they were all staying at his Bach at a beach a little way south. He asked what I was up to and I said I was road tripping, sleeping in the car. He asked if I had a plan for that night and I said I had a few ideas, but I'd already been at the beach longer than expected so he said if I found myself around Opito beach when I was thinking about stopping, I was welcome to park my car on his drive and sleep there! I said thanks, but figured I'd probably make it a bit further south since I was leaving the beach. Then on the way back to the car I found a hill to climb up to a lookout over the whole beach (beautiful!) and ended up leaving at the same time as the group and chatting to them some more. I stopped at a few more beaches heading south and, yep, ended up right at the Opito turning just before sunset. Might have been better to get there earlier since it was dark when I was actually looking for the house ('Spanish looking with three cars on the drive' turned out to be not as helpful as an address) but luckily most of the houses around there were empty too so I found the only one with three cars and lights on and it turned out to be theirs! I was just expecting a patch of grass to pull onto, but they were very welcoming, inviting me in to cook in their kitchen, and then as soon as I got my stuff out to cook insisting that actually I sat with them and share their meal. They were all very friendly, some from Australia and from all over NZ. We had food, desert, a bit of a sing song and it was a really fun evening. I'm generally a person who's happy to be on my own travelling, but it's nice to get to spent time with people (indoors ;) ) and it gives you a whole new look at a country. Plus the drive down before it got dark was really stunning, the sea perfectly still and the islands given an odd look by the clouds and I'd probably never even have taken the turn if I hadn't been invited to stay, so it was a really great experience.

[koala-chaser]

Northland: East coast My trip to a camp site had taken me up North to near Kaitaia and the turning point off to Cape Reinga. Looking at the map, it seemed like everything up to Cape Reinga I'd done previously on a bus trip, so I cut off the very tip on this trip and headed down the east coast from Kaitaia. I took a detour up the spit to the East of the Cape and stopped off at Tokerau Beach. It was beautiful, untouched with no people as far as I could see, but I got there a bit too early in the morning to swim (chilly!) although I did hang out at the beach for a while, wondering up and down and looking for seashells. The beaches continued from there. I stopped at Mangonui, in a little sheltered inlet with crystal clear water and ended up going for a swim across to a tiny beach (which it turned out you could walk to, but at least I committed!) then down South and out a side road to a tiny little town at the end of a road call Whangaroa with another amazing harbour, blue water stretching out to DOC forests all over the far side. I did a hike up a hill and the views was incredible. (DOC = Department of Conservation, NZs national trust. They manage most natural sites, and a lot of camp sites in NZ and will come up a lot) I stopped off at a few more beaches on the drive around, then headed out West towards Kaikohe to stay at a camp site in a cow shed with super friendly owners and dogs set in the hills.