The first day we got there, we rented bikes from our hostel and biked down to a local beach. We didn’t have on bathing suits so we decided to come back another day. Biking was one of my favorite parts of the trip. I felt so young and carefree. That night we decided to go out to dinner. Coromandel is known for their mussels and oysters so we went to a restaurant called Pepper Tree and got oyster shots with tomato juice.....Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be having oysters again in the very near future.
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| Baby Beluga |
The next day, we had planned to go to a hot water beach and Cathedral Cove (which was in the movie Narnia apparently?) The day before we had organized a rental car so we could drive ourselves. We show up at the gas station to pick it up – it was a cute little blue car that we named Baby Beluga. We got in, put our stuff in the back and were ready to head off! – then we realized the car was manual.
Since neither of us can drive stick shift, we had to walk down to the other part of town and get a rental car from another company. We were lucky they were able to give it to us on such short notice! This time it was a silver Nissan we named Bernice – and we were off! – for real this time.
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| Bernice! |
Sam drove first on a road called 309 which isn’t really paved and is very narrow and windy, but we made it out alive! On the way, we even stopped at a little stand and bought some Manuka Honey which NZ is known for. We made up a road trip scavenger hunt to keep the car ride fun, such as get currency from another country and take a picture with a live animal – which almost got me killed by a cow with horns, but that’s a story for another time.
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| Scavenger Hunt List |
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| Currency from different countries - Check! |
We went to the hot water beach first, rented shovels, and started digging. It wasn’t too packed, but we couldn’t really find a spot that was hot anywhere so we ended up with a little lukewarm bath instead of a hot water pool. We even went in the water and I wanted to ride the waves but it was impossible to get passed them before they broke and I almost died trying so we went back to the safety of our kiddie pool....
Then we went to Cathedral Cove and we had to walk about 45 minutes to get there. I swear halfway there I wanted to turn around and someone was like don’t worry it’s worth it...and it was. Absolutely beautiful. We were actually able to swim in this water and we swam out to a giant rock and jumped off. We then went down to another bay by Cathedral Cove called Gemstone Bay and you get to the end of the stairs and its literally all rocks straight to the water! It was very difficult to finally make it down but we managed and then we went snorkeling. I was scared of sharks and I just had to tell myself that it’s shallow water and there are no sharks there – and then one of the next days we heard there was an 8 meter Great White in shallow waters right by Cathedral Cove....
I drove the rest of the way home. I’m sure Sam was scared for her life but I managed to do a pretty decent job. Krissy would have been sick to her stomach with my driving but she wasn’t there to complain.
Sadly, the next day there was a cyclone and the weather was crap so couldn’t go back to that first beach like we had planned. We sat in the hostel and Sam watched ‘Into the Wild’ while I passed out on the other couch. Not the day we had planned, but it was so nice to be out of Auckland for a change and finally be able to travel a bit more.
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