Monday 21st November 2005
Photos I took: 94
An Early Walk
We woke up at around 5am, a sure sign that we had just shifted our body clocks by thirteen hours - New Zealand is GMT+13 hours in the winter (or antipodean summer). Just before 7am, we were walking towards the shops and cafés of Coromandel. We reached a sign saying "Pa Lookout 15 mins" and decided to take a look - we figured that we were a bit early for cafés to be open anyway. The path started innocently enough, but we were soon climbing again. The fifteen minutes turned out to be six with our fantastic Olympic speed pace and we were soon looking out over the bay in the early morning sun. I took a few pictures before we walked back down.
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The view from the Pa Lookout
As we had thought, all the cafés were closed. So, we went into a convenience store and failed to find any sandwiches, so bought cereal bars instead. Walking back towards the youth hostel, we went into another convenience store and found a better selection, so bought some pitta breads and cheese for breakfast with orange juice for me and apple juice for Paula to wash it down with. We sat on the balcony of Anchor Lodge eating breakfast and reading the Rough Guide to see where we were going that day. I dropped the keys back at reception and we drove onto the unsealed road of Route 309. Our destination was Rotorua.
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The road we shouldn't have driven on - Route 309
Breaking Our Rental Agreement
Now, we didn't intentionally do it - it was purely by mistake that we violated our rental agreement. I mean, how were we to know that Route 309 was one of about six or so roads we weren't allowed to drive along, according to the terms and conditions of the rental agreement! We only realised when I read the rental agreement for our second car in the South Island two weeks later. It's a silly rule anyway and breaking it meant Paula got to see her kauri trees :-) It seems to be a habit though, as we did exactly the same thing in Canada by driving on an gravel road - again, it was an innocent mistake and we were driving a 4x4!
I was loving every minute of the drive, taking each corner perfectly. We drove past some pigs routing by the road, so turned around again to go back to the pigs to take a photo - terribly touristy I know, but we did it anyway!
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The pigs we saw
Paula Catches Up On Her Tree Loving
We soon arrived at Waiau Kauri Grove and walked the ten minutes to a raised platform around a young kauri tree. Paula works as a dendroclimatologist which means she counts tree rings so, overcome by such a magnificent beast of a tree, rushed to hug it, sighing in content. Naturally, I took some photos.
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Paula hugging a kauri tree
"Are you done yet?" I asked, wanting to take some photos without her around the tree.
"Just a bit longer," she replied dreamily.
According to an information sign, "Kauri not only live to be a great age - their whakapapa or family history can be traced back to the age of dinosaurs. From a single distant ancestor many different types of kauri descended but only one grows here in Aotearoa / New Zealand..." Whakapapa (pronounced Fak-Ah-Pah-Pah - in Maori 'Wh' is pronounced 'F') is Maori for family history. It's no wonder Paula was in awe of this tree. There are records of a kauri tree being 4000 years old when it died.
The plaque also said about the tree we saw: "It is 1.9 metres through and 6 metres around the trunk of this kauri and you would have to climb 16 metres to reach the first branches. Kairaru, the biggest kauri ever measured, had a girth of 20 metres and was almost twice as high as the tallest tree in this grove."
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Dan and the rental car
Stingray Bay
We walked back to the car, finished breaking the rental agreement and drove back onto the sealed road and onto Te Whanganui-A-Hei, or Cathedral Cove. I had seen a photo in the guide book and as we were in the area, we decided to take a look. By then the heat was getting up, so we put on sun cream, made sure we had lots of water and set off on the 45 minute walk. Not far into the walk, we saw a signpost to Te Karaka, or Stingray Bay.
"Can we go there?" I asked, "Can we, can we, can we?"
"Yes, of course," Paula replied.
We walked along the path and down the steep steps. Another couple left as we arrived, so we had the place to ourselves. The sound of the Pacific crashing on the rocks was a lovely sound. We sat there whilst I took some photos. Looking at the tide marks - it was low tide - we decided that the tidal swing was negligible. We live in the second highest tidal range in the world, second only to the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia, Canada, so it was unusual to see such a low tidal swing.
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Stingray Bay
Cathedral Cove
As another couple arrived, we left and made our way back to the path, continuing towards Cathedral Cove. The steps down to the beach were wooden, steep and fairly narrow. Several people were on the beach sunbathing and others were looking around. I took some photos, probably the same that every other tourist has taken. We sat on the beach and had a nutritious snack of crisps (or chips as some other nationalities like to call them).
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Cathedral Cove
Time was getting on and we still had a long way to drive, so we left and made our way back along the path to the car, taking a short diversion to see a different bit of the path which was for more deserted. Back at the car, the temperature was hot. We had a lunch of cheese and pitta bread, got into the car and drove off towards Rotorua.
We took Route 25 south along the east coast through Whangamata and to Waihi, where we turned onto Route 2. Then we drove through Katikati and past Tauranga, where we turned inland onto Route 33 towards Rotorua. Traffic starting building the nearer we headed towards the city.
Rottenrua
"Have you done something?" I asked Paula, sniffing the air.
"No, of course not!" Paula replied. "Women don't do that sort of thing!"
"You'll explode if you don't," I warned.
"I think you'll find it's sulphur," she replied. "We're almost in Rotorua."
The geothermal activity which is prevalent around the city gave a rather rotten egg, sulphurous smell to the area. We carried on towards the city centre.
"It's on Hinemaru Street," Paula said. She looked down a street as we passed. "Which is down there," she added.
"I'll turn right at the next junction," I said, which I did.
After another right we were on the right road.
"There it is," Paula said, "er, was," as I drove past it.
"It was difficult to turn into," was my excuse. OK, so it was a huge double street with parking outside but I failed to make a decision in time!
We had to go back out of the city to turn around, as we were in a filter lane which put us back onto Route 33 north. We eventually arrived at Crash Palace, a backpackers’ youth hostel. OK, I know it sounds like the name of a porn film or something, but it was very nice. The lady on the desk welcomed us, gave us our key and we found our room. It was a huge double room with a bed, mirror and chair, so we had lots of floor space - very useful seeing we had to pack for our trekking in a couple of days.
We had a much needed shower - well, it had been a hot day and we had done and seen an awful lot. Once we were both clean, we walked out into the city. The rain reminded me of Colorado rain - the sort of big rain you get in the Rockies, which is very different from British drizzle. We did a tour of the streets and settled on Cicci café, an Italian restaurant. It was around 5pm, so we were quite early for eating out, but there were people in there, so we thought we'd give it a try.
Food...
We ordered drinks - I had a beer, naturally, and Paula a soft drink. I ordered the lasagne.
"I'll have the Croeso beef please," asked Paula.
"Hmmm, have you had Croeso before?" the waitress asked. "It's rather hot."
"That's OK, I can always have dessert instead if I can't eat it."
The waitress walked away to take our order to the kitchen. Paula has a much higher food-heat threshold than most - she used to eat Vindaloo when she lived in Bradford. Actually, she doesn't really have a pain threshold. Recently she had some blood on her leg after her cat had been sitting on her - the cat had dug her claws in and Paula hadn't even felt it. Now that isn't normal!
Our food arrived and we tucked in.
"How is it?" I enquired.
"It's good," she replied. "It's not very hot. Do you want to try some?"
She put a small piece on my plate that I avoided for a while. I had to give in though, and gingerly took a bite. It was hot, but edible. I wouldn't want to eat any more than that one piece, however. After we had finished, I ordered a latte. For some reason, if I ever have coffee in a café or restaurant and latte is available I have to have it. They could have a cup of sheer pleasure sprinkled with a sure-fire orgasm and I would still have latte. I don't know why, but it's like an obsessive compulsive disorder.
"Should we go and pay or do we wait here?" I asked Paula, not being used to eating out.
"We should just go up - I saw someone else do that," she replied.
"But is that normal?"
"It doesn't matter, does it?"
"I don't know..."
"Come on, let's go," decided Paula.
We stood up, put on our coats and the waitress came over to take our money. After leaving, we had a discussion about whether we should have left a tip. New Zealand doesn't expect tipping in the same way that the UK doesn't. My view is that we've paid for the meal, the waitresses get paid, so why should we pay them extra for doing their job? OK, sometimes if the meal has been exceptional or the service top-class, then I will happily leave a tip, but normally I don't see the need. America and Canada is a different kettle of fish - their serving staff are paid next to nothing and rely on tips to make a living, so I have no problem tipping there. I did get confused once in a café in Virginia, though, and left a 50% tip, not 15% and then had to get them to refund my card. The waitress had never heard of England or London, so I didn't feel so bad after that.
Back at Crash Palace we broke out the Travel Scrabble and had a game before going to bed.