Coromandel Peninsula to Whitianga

We caught our bus at 7.45 this morn and headed to our first stop of the day - Mt Eden in Auckland which we had already seen but it was nice to see it at sunrise. Then it was of to Thames, a little gold mining town. We finally got to the famous "hot water beach" a pretty little beach where you dig a hole in the beach, it then fills up with hot water and hey presto you have your very own little hot spa pool for sitting in. It's also a famous spot for a bit of surfing as the waves were massive here. Oh and if your wondering how the whole "Hot Water" thing works it's actually located above a volcano which causes a geo thermal hot spring to be created below the sand - very cool but you can only do it 2 hours before and after the low tide


We then reached "Cathedral Cove" well the car park at least, we had to hike to the cove which took about 30 mins but it was a stunning walk and the weather was just divine the cove itself is beautiful well worth the hike to it.



As soon as we made it to the beach Al was off like a rat up a drainpipe into the sea, I on the other hand kept getting caught by other tourists asking me to take pictures of them and having the cheek to tell me how to do it (they were of course English), how annoying .....,


So after about an hour at the beach we made it back to the bus (having both lost a couple of lbs walking in the heat), and headed off to "Whitianga". When we arrived we went and did some traditional Maori bone carving - I made Al a necklace and he made one for me, yeah i know soppy crap but it was great fun to do well apart from buggering up my nails with all the sanding and drilling and NO I'm not been a girlie girl :-}


In Whitianga we checked into a really fantastic hostel called "The Cats Pajamas". Wendy and Buster were our hosts and they were just great, she is a chatter box and mothering type and he is ex air force who builds planes in his spare time, there was one actually half built in the garage. We ended up spending the whole weekend here as it was Al's b'day weekend

Being the dutiful girlfriend that i am I booked a restaurant for Al's b'day dinner called "Salt" which was over looking the marina, the meal was superb, some of the delights of the evening were green lipped mussels, tuna, lamb, garlic mash etc etc so in right irish/scottish style we got absolutely pissed up and met up with Ryan and Tom from Sheffield, they are on our bus and in our hostel, they are the most friendly guys ever. We had a great night out with them.