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Northland (heading south)
Saturday 26th to Sunday 27th November 2011
Auckland to Hahei Beach - Saturday 26th November 2011
Departing from the big smoke of Auckland we headed south towards the Coromandel Peninsula via Thames.
Today the Sandwich club was officially born. Seems you can get a good lunch for under $2 each.......buy in bulk! Seven of us (started as four) clubbed together to create a Pac n' Save lunch special (Photo tells all).
We stopped at Hot Water Beach - a popular beach and geothermal attraction located on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, approximately 12 kilometres southeast of Whitianga.
Hot Water Beach is as good as its name. Hot pools can be dug out of the sand at low tide near the rocks and in places where steam can be seen rising from the open sea at high tide. And when they say HOT they mean it. You could make a cup of tea out of this boiling water (not recommended).
The idea was to try and dig into the sand, locate you hot water pool and then dig a channel from the sea to cool it to a comfortable temperature. But as you can imagine there were about a million other tourists trying to do the same thing (it was like Kensington Gardens on a Saturday - irritating after 2 minutes)
Arriving at Hahei we stayed on a Backpacker site adjacent to the beach, chilled out on the afternoon with a walk to Cathedral cove & ending the day with a group BBQ at the site.
The group is still warming to one another and the guys I met on the North Island are slowly drifting as they jump off the bus to settling down for a few days.
Hahei to Raglan - Sunday 27th November 2011.
Yet another 8am start and we're heading to the renowned surf town of Raglan. On the way we stop of at Paeroa (the home of L&P, aka Lemon Paeroa). This is New Zealands iconic soft drink - a bit like Iron Brew to the Scotts. L&P is becoming rather a hit with my taste buds, so I have chosen to ignore the content.
Arriving in Reglan it became increasingly obvious that there was only one reason to be here and that was to surf! So I signed up to an afternoon of surfing lesions. This really was awesome and I'd like to claim that I was the star pupil, but with only 6/20 attempts to catch a wave and stay on the board is not something to write home about. Still it was great fun!
In the evening some of us booked onto an evening cruse around the bay and were promised a sunset to die for and fish and chips. Neither materialised and it was windy and cloudy. So I settled for a couple of beers and some peanut M&M's, which I have become strangely addicted to (M&M's that is).
By night we Stayed In an Eco-lodge situated in the native bush. Felt really out in the sticks. This was evident due to the lack of Internet and mobile connection. What's going on NZ! Everywhere seems to be a mission to get any connection, and it costs a fortune!
High point - catching the waves of course.
Low point today - I managed to leave my wallet containing my bank card, cash and driving licence in Pac n Save! Flaming idiot. After some stressing I just wrote this off as a blonde Gavyn moment and got on with it. Thankfully I had another debit card in my bag, so not all was lost and I was soon spending again.
Fact of the day - everyday is a school day
Jandals = Flip Flops in New Zealand. The idea of Jandals evolved from a Japanese single toe shoe which New Zealand took and came up with the complete open toed shoe. The New Zealand gum trees provided the materials to produce these funky little numbers. Apparently there was also a rather large legal battle between Australia and New Zealand over the rights to Jandals, and seemingly New Zealand won.
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