Friday, March 26: Had a meeting today with Brenton from Freelance Adventures. He runs adventure programs for a couple of camps right near Hunua Falls, which I have previously visited. He is going to send me his schedule and see if he can fit me in for some future sessions that they have going on. Working with Brenton would be cool because he's stationary; once I learned his systems I would have a good knowledge of how things worked because only the groups would change; the activites stay the same.
After my meeting I headed east to the Coromandel Pennisula. It is about an hour's drive from Auckland and sticks up like a thumb forming the Firth of Thames between it and Auckland. In the town of Thames, on the pennisula's west side, I turned eastward again, heading for the Coromandel Forest Park. I stopped at the DOC office and purchased a hut ticket, then parked my car at the end of the dirt road and headed into the bush. I hiked my way up steps carved by the gumdiggers to the Pinnacles Hut, although it seems unfair to call it a "hut". It's massive, with beds for 80 people, a kitchen, drop toilets, sinks and a shower (cold only). There are also solar powered lights. The hut is very well integrated into the surrounding area, so much so that it's hard to tell it's even there until you are right on top of it. I especially liked the decks connecting everything together. The trail up to the hut was a bit demanding, as the rocks were slippery and the steps carved into them were uneven and some had very high steps. I dropped my stuff off at the hut and headed farther up more stairs (wooden this time), and rungs set in rocks, to the top of a rock formation called The Pinnacles. The view was very nice but it was super windy so I didn't stay on the top for vey long. Back at the hut I made myself some dinner and called it a night.
Took a different trail back down to my car. On my way down I got buzzed by the search and rescue helicopter, which kept flying overhead and even hovered at the treetop level right in front of me. Then at the end of the trail I passed a search and rescue team, and as I was leaving the car park, the police and a ranger. I hope they were just out training and someone wasn't actually injured and in need of rescue. But you never know.
From the trail, I drove back out to Thames, and then northward and visited the Orchid & Butterfly House. It is a steamy greenhouse with lots of tropical flowers growing and many many butterflies fluttering around. My favorite was a big blue one, but it moved too fast to get a good photo, and never seemed to land on anything. The receptionist at the Butterfly House had a lengthy conversation with me about the John Muir Trail (since I was wearing my JMT t-shirt). Her family's name is Muir and she wondered who John Muir was and what his trail was about. After visiting with the butterflies I spent a few minutes using the pay internet to send some quick emails. I have sold my copy of "The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo" on TradeMe (NZ's equivalent to eBay) and needed to communicate with the purchaser to finalize details. (I bought the book for $25 and sold it for $15.50. Not too bad...) Then I headed north once again and tackled crazy, windy, scenic route 25 which runs along the coast and has some spectacular beach and cliff views. It very much reminded me of the Oregon coast and I thought about KellyO and how she would love to see the views since I know she loves it out on the west coast, too.
I arrived in Coromandel Town with just enough time to buy some sweet dinner supplies at the Coromandel Smoking Company: garlic smoked mussels, camembert cheese and fancy crackers. Yum! I found a hostel to camp at for the night, got myself set up, and then dined on deliciousness. I think Coromandel Smoking Co. ships their products around the world, if you're interested:
http://www.corosmoke.co.nz/. I turned in for the night and slept great.
Sunday, March 28: The next morning I was up bright an early and I bumped into Matt, a kid I met on the Kiwi Ex bus tour of Auckland City about a month ago, in the hostel kitchen. He's from Canada and is in NZ until June or July. He had bought a car and had made four friends (a Slovenian girl, a Dutch guy, another Canadian dude and a girl from Sweden) to travel around the north island. They had stayed at the hostel the night before, too and I had just missed seeing him. They were also on their way to Hahei, Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove, like me, only they were taking the more direct route. I departed from the hostel and sat on the dock in the Coromandel Town Harbor reading and thinking for a while. Then I headed off to the Driving Creek Railroad, a narrow gauge railway that has been built into the side of a steep hill covered in native bush. You ride the trail up its torturous track including several spirals, a double decker viaduct, a bunch of tunnels and reversing points, and a zig zag section. The train was built by a potter named Barry Brickell, who put it there to use to transport clay down from the mountain for use in his work. Eventually his banker forced him to turn the train into a tourist attraction because he couldn't pay back his loans. And it is now really popular. At the end of the train ride is the "Eye-full" tower - honestly I didn't get the joke until someone said it out loud: Eye-full = Eiffel! - a beautiful wooden tower with a walkway that curves round its outside and provides a great view of what you just came up in the train the sea beyond. My seatmate for the train ride was a British girl named Ruth, who told me she was working at a hospital in Palmerston North and was almost at the end of an 8-month stay in NZ. I naively asked her if she was a nurse, because she looked so young, but no, she is a doctor. Cool, and bad on me for stereotyping her. We chatted on the train and come to find out she was headed to Hahei as well. When we parted ways I told her I would maybe see her there!
From there I headed off that morning and took The 309 road, a partly unsealed, windy and twisty hilly road that cuts east across the pennisula to the other side. On the way I stopped at the Waiau Waterworks, a sort of zany, off the wall amusement park where everything operates by water, and Waiau Falls. By the time I made it to Hot Water Beach it was too late to sit in a hot pool that day. There are a couple of thermal springs that run under the sand on Hot Water Beach, and for two hours either side of low tide you can dig a hole and sit in your own private hot pool! So I checked out Moko, a cool art gallery, where I splurged and bought myself a swirly ring that fits nicely on my thumb. I have been wearing it ever since and I think it was a good purchase. I was also looking for a present for my mom's birthday, but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me. I checked into my hostel (Auntie Dawn's Place (+Joe)), and met my hosts, Auntie Dawn, and Joe, who are a delightful older couple with a few apartments under their house that they rent out and some caravans in their garden which serve as backpacker accomodation. That's where I stayed. It was actually fairly ideal. I enjoyed it. I had a whole caravan to myself, a bathroom and shower in the garage, and the beach only a 5 minute walk away. I got settled and then headed up to the house to pay for my accomodation, and Joe invited me in to watch a rugby league game. So I sat with Joe and we talked and he explained the finer points of rugby leage (which is not the same game as rugby). In rugby league you run with the ball and try to break through tackles or you can pass the ball off behind you or laterally, but never forward. If the other team tackles you five times (there is no stoppage of play for a tackle, the refs just yell "ONE! (or whatever number tackle it is) and then "OFF! OFF!" (to make them stop tackling) and the player with the ball puts it down for someone else on his team to grab and have a go) then it is a turnover and you either kickoff or the opponents get the ball where you last left off. It is a fun game to watch and very fast paced. I enjoyed it, and NZ won AND they beat Australia so there was rejoicing all around. Joe also fed me a pear and some type of passion-fruit related something from trees on his property and a couple of glasses of his home brew, which wasn't bad at all and left me feeling quite happy on the whole. After spending the afternoon inside, I was now ready to take advantage of the remaining natural light and I headed off to Cathedral Cove.
Apparently, Cathedral Cove is in the movie "Prince Caspian" - I guess at the beginning when the kids get sucked off the train station platform they open their eyes and they're coming out of a giant rock tunnel onto this beautiful beach, and that's Cathedral Cove. It really is rather amazing. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I pulled up at the beach, and who should pull up next to me but Matt, again, and his carful of international friends. So I suddenly had hiking buddies for the beach! We trekked down to see it (about a 20 minute walk) near sunset, and it certainly seemed a magical place, making it fitting to be used in a Narnia movie, I guess. There is the enormous rock tunnel that you can walk through, and play chicken with the waves to run out the other side and not get wet, then there's the sharply shaped rocks that stick up through the pounding surf, and the freshwater, natural "shower" (waterfall) at the end of the beach that comes trickling down through the roots of the shrubs and plants above. And toilets built into a little hut in the undergrowth with huge windows to take in the view. A very cool place.
Matt et. al. invited me to come with them to their hostel for dinner, and we barbequed backpacker style (potatoes, onions & hot dogs, although word to the wise, Kiwi hot dogs are disgusting, they are very mushy and have very little flavor. Similarly their sausages don't taste like a whole lot, but I like them grilled because they get crispy, so that's okay. I think if you want a North American style hot dog you have to buy something else, don't get the thing labeled "hot dog" in the shop.) I donated a bar of chocolate to the feast and helped with the dishes. Ruth happened to be staying at the hostel as well, and as I chatted to her for a bit she told me that she hadn't had time to get into a hot pool either. So we made a plan to go that night, at 11pm (low tide was at 12 or 1am) and I said I'd meet her at the beach. Matt, because he is crazy, decided to come too. So I went home and put my togs on. By this time it had started to storm, and a strong wind was lashing a light rain around rather violently. But down to the beach I went anyway, with the spade I'd borrowed from Auntie Dawn in tow. I met Matt & Ruth and we headed down the beach into the dark and stormy night. There were five other people already there when we arrived, but three of them left straight away because it really wasn't a very nice night. So we took over their hot pool and sat in it for a while. It was fun, but not ideal, because I don't really like sand or having sand all over me and that is pretty unavoidable when you go hot pooling in a pool made out of sand. Bah. Plus, I was at the end of the pool that must have been right over the hot spring because the water was so hot it would burn you if you kept your feet in for too long. When the waves rolled in high they splashed into our little hot pool, collapsing the sides and flooding it with cold(er) water. Add to this the raging wind and driving rain, and it was an interesting experience. I walked home after I got too cold to sit out there any longer, and tried to extricate sand from various places on my body before I went to bed.
Monday, March 29: The next day I was up early enough to have a shower and hit the road by 9:45. I drove back to Auckland and came home and cleaned my car out, then headed into the city for a meeting with my new boss Fiona, at Youthtown to scout out a location for activities during the Easter holidays next week.
And that was the end of my weekend adventure in the Coromandel Pennisula.
Sunday, March 28: The next morning I was up bright an early and I bumped into Matt, a kid I met on the Kiwi Ex bus tour of Auckland City about a month ago, in the hostel kitchen. He's from Canada and is in NZ until June or July. He had bought a car and had made four friends (a Slovenian girl, a Dutch guy, another Canadian dude and a girl from Sweden) to travel around the north island. They had stayed at the hostel the night before, too and I had just missed seeing him. They were also on their way to Hahei, Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove, like me, only they were taking the more direct route. I departed from the hostel and sat on the dock in the Coromandel Town Harbor reading and thinking for a while. Then I headed off to the Driving Creek Railroad, a narrow gauge railway that has been built into the side of a steep hill covered in native bush. You ride the trail up its torturous track including several spirals, a double decker viaduct, a bunch of tunnels and reversing points, and a zig zag section. The train was built by a potter named Barry Brickell, who put it there to use to transport clay down from the mountain for use in his work. Eventually his banker forced him to turn the train into a tourist attraction because he couldn't pay back his loans. And it is now really popular. At the end of the train ride is the "Eye-full" tower - honestly I didn't get the joke until someone said it out loud: Eye-full = Eiffel! - a beautiful wooden tower with a walkway that curves round its outside and provides a great view of what you just came up in the train the sea beyond. My seatmate for the train ride was a British girl named Ruth, who told me she was working at a hospital in Palmerston North and was almost at the end of an 8-month stay in NZ. I naively asked her if she was a nurse, because she looked so young, but no, she is a doctor. Cool, and bad on me for stereotyping her. We chatted on the train and come to find out she was headed to Hahei as well. When we parted ways I told her I would maybe see her there!
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