Captain Cook was Here

I called the GreenCab company on Skype from our apartment and we were ferried in their hybrid vehicle to our gas powered Apex rental car. My phone is supposed to work, but I can't seem to get the codes right to successfully dial a NZ number.  Our rental car is just like my car except the steering wheel is on the right side and I keep turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal.

Jake drove us out of Auckland after a 20 minute stop to buy camping gear at The Warehouse, New Zealand’s equivalent of Kmart. 

Camping gear acquired!

In Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula we stopped for a stretch and for me a “short black”, an espresso.  The road hugs the coast after Thames so I channeled my inner race course driver, while driving on the left.  The speed limit is usually posted at 100 km/hour, but then there will be immediate warning signs to take the next curve at 35.  We stopped in Coromandel town for lunch at the Pepper Tree.  We split the chicken pie and a steakburger.  Both on the gourmet side and very good.  The pie was more interesting though with a peppery, flavorful gravy. 

From Coromandel we took a mostly gravel road across the peninsula through the mountains.  The road winds along steep hillsides and is often only wide enough for one car.  I was grateful that there weren’t many cars coming the other way! 

Kauri trees

Waterfall in the Coromandel

There’s a pretty waterfall along the way and a walk to see a small Kauri tree grove (Agathis australis, Auracauriaceae).  A woman was stationed at the entrance to the path to ask visitors to clean their shoes to prevent the movement of a fungus causing a blight on the kauri.  We brushed off our shoes and sprayed them with disinfectant.  The trees have huge straight trunks so it’s a little like visiting a grove of redwoods except that there are a lot more plants growing under and on them.  There are only a dozen or so large trees to see. The rest were logged and shipped off to Britain.  One ship wrecked in the harbor where we are staying in the late 1800s carried prisoners from England to Australia, then Kauri trees back to England.

View from our room

We found our hotel, the Beachfront Resort, a little north of town, about a half hour walk along the beach or sidewalk.  The room has its own miniature kitchen and a little patio outside.  I’m not quite sure why it is called a resort but it is a nice place.  The beach is right outside the room and you can borrow boogie boards and sea kayaks.

And you can borrow shovels and pails for Hot Water Beach.  Low tide was at 11 am today, so around 9 am we drove about a half hour south and around Whitianga Bay to Hot Water Beach.  As the tide recedes you dig a whole near one of the hot springs under the sand to create your own hot pool.  In this activity you are joined by dozens of other people old and young from many countries so it is not exactly a peaceful, quiet experience but it was a lot of fun in a more communal way.   We started out next to a young maybe British couple.  Then a group of 4 older Americans started a dig and a family of 6 Australians with a couple young kids.  A single younger French woman took a spot between our pool and the Brits and then a young German guy started digging adjacent to us.  Somehow he maneuvered to sit next to the young French woman, but after a while she ditched him.     By the time we left there was whole other set of people in the pools.  You had to keep moving sand around to keep the water at a good temperature and as the tide went out those of us who had started earlier had hotter and hotter water. 

hot water beach

Cathedral Beach

Close by is the small town of Hahei and from there you can take about a ½ hour walk to Cathedral Beach which has a big stone arch over the beach.  On the way you pass a small grove of old Puriri trees (Vitex lucens) with twisted trunks and shaggy bark.  You also pass what appears to be a relatively new native tree planting in honor of the soldier who fought in the battle of Gallipoli.  This awful WWII battle seems to be very much on the minds of Kiwis and Aussies lately.  The night before we had watched a tv program based on the battle called something like Dispatches from Gallipoli because it was based on photos a reporter had taken.

Back in Whitianga we had a late lunch at Salt, a restaurant that is part of a big hotel on the marina.  The food was excellent – I had a pasta with Cloudy Bay clams and fresh cherry tomatos and Jake got an Asian chicken salad.  The clams were some of the best I’ve ever eaten, very meaty and an excellent briny flavor.

And Captain Cook?  He watched the Transit of Mercury from Mercury Bay just outside our door!  (I watched the transit of Venus with a bunch of friends a couple years ago - Cook was in Tahiti for that one).