Coromandel Holiday!

What a great time we had in the Coromandel! It's such a lovely place and it was beautiful weather the whole time we were there!
Saturday after a lot of running around (We'd forgotten to organise someone to look after Oscar - Thanks Bonita!) we finally hit the road. It took us about 3 and a half hours to get to where we were staying. Sarah's parents and sister had already arrived and settled in by the time we got there.

Warning: Big read ahead!

After a catch up and a chat we all headed off down to the local pub (called Smitty's) for a couple of brews, some dinner and to watch the All Blacks vs. the Springboks. Normally rugby bores me to tears and it did for the first half of the match. The second half was really good though, very close and the AB's finally won it in the final stages.
Once the game was over the pub cleared out, largely in part I think due to the terrible music they started to play over the PA system. We got "Love Shack" and "Y.M.C.A", that terrible Dr. Who and the Tardis song was just starting to play as we left!

Sunday morning we got up and had a nice home cooked breakfast, sausages bacon and eggs. I drowned mine in uber hot sauce and it set me on fire, just the way to start the day. After breakie we went for a walk around the town, did a bit of shopping and looked for stuff to do. I ended up giving my car a wash to get rid of all the bugs, we played a bit of rugby with a ball Holly had bought. Sarah and Holly tried to play badminton with the $2 racquets and shuttlecock they'd bought but the racquets were so crappy that if you hit the shuttlecock hard enough it would go through the racquet. Pretty funny.

Later that night we went out for a really tasty meal in the only place that was open called Salt. It was attached to the other local pub in town so we didn't expect much, but the food was better than you get in some mega flash places in Auckland. We also gave Holly her present, a really neat little digital camera for her trip to the UK.

Monday we got up and went and bought breakfast - Much easier and less mess to clean up. Then we drove over to Coromandel, it's the name of a town in The Coromandel. Confused? We had a good look around there and took some great photos on top of the mountains you had to cross to get there.
Then we drove out to Hot Water Beach. This is the most amazing place, in the middle of the beach there are natural springs that heat the water. The warm stuff is only accessible two hours either side of low tide though, if you arrive at the wrong time there's nothing! Which sadly is when we arrived, just after high tide! Still we had a great time on the beach, playing rugby, having a long jump competition and just playing around. The only thing that annoyed me was the amount of Suck Monsters that bit me! I frikking hate these things and they frikking love me.

It was Sarah's parents and Holly's last night on Monday night so we went out for dinner again (it's so hard being on holidays) Once again it was fantastic, I had a pizza with lots of chilli and garlic on it. Mmmmm.

Tuesday morning Sarah and I made sure we had the timing right and drove back out to Hot Water Beach. We hired a shovel and went to dig in the sand! People were already there lazing in their little pools they'd built. I tried frantically to built a little pool for us but the sea kept washing it away. When I finally did manage to get on top of the sea I realised I'd built mine in a dud place, there wasn't any hot spring under mine to warm it up! BUGGER! In the end we just gave up and hopped in someone else’s after they left. We had a great time, sitting at the beach in a steaming hot pool of water. If you dug your feet into the sand it was so hot they'd get burnt! After we got comfy lots of other people arrived and had exactly the same problems I'd had, the sea washing them away or no springs. We just kept telling people to join us, most of them did after giving up.
It was heaps of fun anyway, one of the really amazing things I've experienced while in NZ.

Sarah's parents and Holly arrived a while later, they'd been packing as they had to go back to Napier. We headed back to the unit then went for a drive over to Whangamata where we checked out the shops for a while then took some cool photos down by the beach.

Wednesday morning it was time for us too to pack up and head home. We stopped in at a few places along the way, one of them the most amazing rich-prick spot I've ever seen. These people have their shacks which really are totally huge mansions, they have little wharfs out the back each to park their uber expensive flash boat at. The whole place is watched over by security cameras. Crazy!

Wednesday afternoon we finally arrived home, tired but happy to be home! Oscar was glad to see us too I think. It was also Kelly's birthday (Sarah's other flatmate) so Sarah spent some time doing up a cool sign for her when she got home. It turned out really well, here's a photo.

That's all!

--Tim

PS: I hate SuckMonsters. I have about 10 bites all over my legs.
PPS: All images from the trip are here.