Coromandel Peninsula
Black sandy beaches and turquoise seas awash with ancient, gnarly Pohutukawa trees blossoming huge red flowers… it looked exactly as the tourist brochures described it, all the way round the coast – just beautiful. We started in Thames – a little town with old wooden buildings that had a western-esque feel to it. Then up the coast a little to Coromandel Town where we spent an age with the i-site (tourist info) lady who suggested we should really book our ferry (to cross the N to S island) ASAP for fear of not getting booked on one at all!!!
All ferried up, we drove up to the very tip of the peninsula over a ford (that we weren’t really sure we were going to get over at all – but after seeing a huge camper van and a hire car drive through we took our chances and it was easy peasy, apart from a little scratch to the under side of the car anyway!!).
The road ended at the DOC campsite at Fletcher Bay where we stayed that night – it was based almost at the tip of the peninsula. We parked up there and then walked around to Stony Bay lookout where the road starts again going down the other side.
Up at the crack of dawn we drove back over the ford (all good this time – must be getting better at this) and down to Hot Water Beach where we were assured that low tide brings areas of natural hot water if you dig in the right spot on the beach. We arrived to a heaving car park of campervans and a surreal herd of tourists wealding spades. After a walk down to see what the big fuss was about, we met a load of people who had dug big holes on the beach only to find that their hole was bringing in cold water. The only people who had managed to get hot water appeared to have taken up the whole space with a giant hole and had brought their entire extended family along to sit in it. I asked if they minded if I dip my toe in and sure enough it was very hot. Great, we thought uninspired, and wandered off for the next tourist trap…
Sure enough, all those campervans (and slow drivers)that we had seen at Hot Water Beach moved on to our next destination too (the strange tramlines of tourism) – Cathedral Cove. We hired snorkelling gear and walked down to a little bay along from Cathedral Cove – Gemstone Bay, with a DOC snorkelling trail – a few bouys dotted around the bay with information about what you’re likely to see below: loads of snapper, kelp, John Dory, etc… similar to what we saw in the Bay of Islands. A really lovely idea to make it a trail as the buoys also acted as floating handles to hang on to when you fancied a rest from swimming about. Jolly good idea, I thought 🙂
After our snorkel, we walked back up the hill sporting our very trendy wetsuits and received some rather intrigued looks from the tourists who were on their way down to Cathedral Cove. Changed and coffee’d up we too followed the herds back down to Cathedral Cove – a beach with a big arched rock over it. Then the rain began so we headed back up and drove to the Wentworth Valley for our DOC campsite fix.
Tags: Travel
ruthmcohen
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