Once the morning came, we had our hot lemons and muesli's, and then had a nice stroll along the beach for half an hour, which seemed like a good thing to do on a Tuesday morning. We also found a swing attached to a large tree so treated ourselves to 10 minutes of unadulterated fun. It was fun.
Meg didn't fancy driving back along the scary unsealed clifftop road,
so I drove us halfway to Whitianga before Meg took over. Whitianga is on the eastern coast of the peninsula, and to get there we had to go up, up, and UP over the hills (2nd gear all the way!), but we got a great view of both the seaboards from the top.
In Whitianga, before we could do anything else we had to check our NZ bank balance, as we had been waiting nearly 2 weeks for our UK account to transfer over much-needed funds, otherwise we would have pennies to live on. True to form, the banks were utterly useless. The money hadn't transferred and we had pennies to live on.
There wasn't much we could do until the UK banks opened for business (the 24 hour number proved to be a lie), so we checked into one of the 2 campervan sites in town. It wasn't the coolest place we have stayed since being in NZ, but it did prove to have its uses. It was very much Motorhome Central, geared up towards the summer season when all the large mobile-home owning kiwi's come out in force for a holiday by the sea. A few of them were still around. It had separate pitches for each home, very different to the other campsites we had stayed in where you can just park up wherever you like.
We chilled out for a few hours, feelimg a bit sorry for ourselves and let down (again) by the banks. There was a trampoline that lifted my mood for five minutes, until my feet got wet.
We watched some TV(!) for the first time on 3 weeks. We saw an advert for Coronation Street (apparently there is Eastenders and Emmerdale too), so Carol Hodson, you will feel right at home.
We also watched some national news which really made me realise the size of NZ – all the stories (bar one) would have made the back-end of the local news in the UK.
In the evening, we met a very nice french couple called Remy and Melanie, who kindly gave us some Nesquik that they didn't want. I am very excited about this.
We walked back into town to ring the banks and finally started to put the pieces together as to what exactly had happened with the transfer. Needless to say, we have had to put the request in again, and wait for a few more days to see if they get it right this time. In the meantime we have managed to get some money out of the ATM here to last us a few more days, but we're watching the pennies...
The next day we didn't stay in Whitianga too long, as we had quite a lot to squeeze into the day. We drove out to a place called Hahei, which had the most perfect beach we had seen so far in NZ. We walked around the back of some houses which had their own private staircase down to the sand. We had a paddle in the pacific and spent about 30 minutes just gushing about how ace it would be to have that on your backdoorstep. Pretty cool.
From there we had a short drive to Cathedral Cove. The car park was at the top of a hill and there was a 45 minute walk down to the cove. Since being here we have seen numerous photos/postcards of Cathedral Cove and it was absolutely stunning. Being about a 45 minute walk from any carpark/road, it is pretty secluded and is surrounded by huge cliffs all around. It is also split into 2 separate beaches by an arch formation in the rocks – thus giving it the Cathedral title. It did feel very epic and felt like we had walked onto a James Bond set.
The only downer to this near-prefect moment was my ability to drop our new camera into the wet sand, thus getting sand particles into all the nooks and crannies on the back of the camera. I felt rather, if not very, stupid. Meg has done her best since to pick out all the particles (after leaving it to dry so they were more moveable), and hopefully it hasn't been affected. But I still feel stupid.
Walking back we stopped by Gemstone Bay, where there was a snorkelling trail in the water, but unfortunately we did not have enough time for this, but the water was still crystal clear and was very inviting. However, we had to rush back as we wanted to get to Hot Water Beach in time for low-tide.
For those that don't know, Hot Water Beach boasts a strange geo-thermal activity. If you visit the beach 90 minutes either side of low-tide, and dig yourself a hole in the sand in the right place, you can create your own HOT bath. Don't ask me how it works, but basically hot water seeps through the sand if you deep dig enough, and as we made our way around the corner to the section of the beach where this happens, we came upon about 30 people frollicking around in the hot water 'pools' that they had created. It was very weird, but strangely seducing. People take their own spades (or hire them) and dig these 'pools' (paddling pool size) and sit in them in the hot water. If your hole is close enough to the ocean, the tide sometimes washes in its own cold water to make the water more bearable. I say this becase the water from under the ground is HOT. I could only just bring myself to sit in it, but you could push your hand deeper into sand and it was nearly scoldingly hot.
The whole area was very steamy and very sociable - everyone shared their pools with other people and all in all, it was a very odd pleasurable experience. We loved it.
I got a cold shower back at the car park to wash all the sand off, and then we had a pot noodle each.......Well, I SAY Pot Noodle, but the NZ lookalikes have proved to be a very distant and poor relation to that Great British institution. Pot Noodles, we miss you.
Meg drove us from there down towards Whangamata, another beach resort on the east coast, but we were actually camping about 7km outside of there. It was another DOC campsite, so very basic facilities (dump toilet and cold shower), but very quiet and peaceful. Apparently these sites get really crowded in the summetime, but we have been fortunate to have our pick of the place, and at this campsite there was only one other couple camping.
In the next morning, we had no major plans, so took ourself off for a walk from the campsite along the Wentworth River. We follwed a track for about an hour and it led the way to the Wentworth falls – 2 HUGE waterfalls, one above the other. It was really magical, and we made our way down to the splash pool at the bottom. People do go swimming in there, but it fet just a little bit too icy for us – maybe in the summer.
When we got back to Peggy, we treated(?) ourselves to a cold shower, and headed off to Whangamata to have some lunch. Whangamata is a surf mecca apparently, and we ate our sandwiches while watching some surfers do....not very much actually. It must have been an off-day. Or they were rubbish surfers.
We have now driven further south towards a town called Waihi, and camped in a place called Dickey Flat, which is a FREE DOC campsite. From here it is a short walk to the Karangahake gorge, which was the centre of the Goldmining industry about 100 years ago, so in the next couple of days we will hope to see some of that. And to find out how they get those perfectly-shaped gold bullion ingots out of the hillside.
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