19th to 20th February, 2020

A quick bit of history first (of course) about the name, Coromandel. It was actually named after HMS Coromandel that did a bit of surveying work on the peninsula in 1820. It had previously been HMS Malabar before HMS Coromandel and the East Indiaman, Cuvera before that, launched in Calcutta in 1798. Sadly the ship seemed to spend its later years carrying convicts to Australia and then being a prison hulk in Bermuda until being broken up in 1853.

I expect you are all wondering whether we saw the Yonghy-Bonghy Bo, who, as you will no doubt recall, resided on the Coast of Coromandel, where the early pumpkins flow amid the Bong-trees. Unfortunately not, as this is, of course, the Coromandel coast of India not the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand. I am glad we have cleared that up…..

We set off in the morning in a southerly direction in order to make our way round the Hauraki Gulf, which separates Auckland from the peninsula, which largely protects Auckland from the Pacific Ocean. Our first town of the peninsula was called Thames, so we sort of felt at home. We then drove up the western side on a lovely coastal road with nice sandy beaches and crashing waves. In order to break the journey somewhat, we took a slight detour to the Rapaura Watergardens, a 64 acre private estate that had been very beautifully laid out as, well, you guessed it, watergardens, complete with running streams and rivulets, waterlily ponds and some interesting statuary amongst the trees and ferns. It only took about 45 minutes to walk the paths, but was a very refreshing break.

It was then up to the actual town of Coromandel, which is a very charming holiday destination (a lot of Aucklanders have homes on the peninsula), with some nice old architecture of which the following is an example….

Then over the top and down the east side to Whitianga (pronounced phitianga – which begs the question, when they were Anglicising the Maori names and words, why did they write it with a W? Answers on a postcard, please). We tough that as we had a bit of time we would sign up for a cruise down the coast to see what is one of the most visited attractions on the Peninsula, Cathedral Cove. It was well worth making the trip with some stunning coastline and nice beaches as well as the thrill of some quite big seas at times. We even went into a cave in the boat which was both fun and scary! You have to trust the guy driving the boat quite a lot that he knows what he is doing!

Finally we headed a bit further south, admiring the views out over the Pacific and then looped up to the seaside town of Hahei for our overnight at the Hahei Retreat, which was comfortable enough, if a bit on the warm side.

The plan the next day was to walk down the coast to Cathedral Cove, a 45 minute jaunt along the coast and then to take the water taxi back to where the car was parked. Unfortunately the car park nearest the track to the Cove was full and that meant we would have had to walk about an hour and the water taxi was not running that day due to the sea conditions (which was odd as they looked much better than the day before). So we abandoned the attempt. At least we had seen it from a short distance the day before.

Instead we started on our way to Auckland Airport, but stopping en route at Hot Water Beach. This is a particularly different experience to what you might find anywhere else as on a portion of this beach, at low tide, if you dig yourself  hole, warm/hot/boiling water seeps up and fills the hole (provided you have built some retaining ramparts) and you then jump in and enjoy the warm water. We were not really prepared for the number of people all armed with mini spades (you can rent them for NZ$10) trying to stake their claims to their little patch of beach. The warning was given that you should avoid jumping into what might seem to be an abandoned pool as it probably meant that the water was way too hot!

Finally back to the airport, drop the car off and check in for our flight to Christchurch on Air New Zealand. Now the latter has very strict baggage allowance rates and although we had bought extra allowance and tried to weigh everything at Viji’s, it seemed that you could not have more than 23 kgs per bag, so, with the help of some very usefully provided scales and a very nice member of Air New Zealand staff, there was a bit of weighing and moving of items between bags being done until we were legal. And we had to worry about the hand luggage. It all started because we had brought quite a lot of stuff for the cruise that you would not generally need for a tour of NZ and Australia – a dinner jacket for example. All was fine eventually and we had a very uneventful and short flight to Christchurch, picked up another hire car and drove to our first hotel on the South Island, Amross Court Motel, which proved to be clean and comfortable and with a very helpful Chinese lady on reception who directed us to an excellent Thai restaurant nearby.

And so to bed…..