A Helicopter & the Red Checkers

This morning we were woken by a helicopter that seemed to be buzzing our campsite. In fact it was topdressing or spraying the farm & in particular the hills behind the beach. It’s turn around point was right over the campsite, back & forward it weaved its way up & down the hill paddocks. After about six runs it would disappear over the hills only to return 10 minutes later to pick up where it had left off. This farm must be doing very well; helped along by many $5 notes! J

Yesterday we were also buzzed by the Red Checkers. The Checkers are the aerobatic  flying Team of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. They fly Pacific Aerospace CT-4E Airtrainers & were doing some practice work over Whitianga for the Super V8 opening in Pukekohe. We were having our lunch on the beach & a young foreign tourist came to ask us what it was all about. He thought they were doing a show just for him; there was no one else about! J

I cheated, these are my Napier Art Deco Checker shots... :)

 As you can see from my last post we did a bit of tiki-touring around the beaches on the north-eastern side of the peninsula that forms the top of Mercury Bay. These are all beautiful  ocean beaches & it would be hard to pick a favourite, I think I liked Otama for its isolation but Opito would be my choice to holiday at & if I wanted to get totally away from the world for a bit I’d have a bach in Matapaua Bay. We’ve anchored in most of the bays of these beaches at various times over the years but this was the first time I had visited them by road. Black Jack Road is world famous in New Zealand, well, world famous if you visit the Coromandel regularly. It’s another winding narrow gravel road up & over a ridge, for us, after all the winding narrow gravel roads we’ve been over lately it wasn’t actually that bad. And the views were spectacular.

 

I wanted to take the very narrow winding road to Matapaua Bay, a bay that’s always fascinated me because it’s actually on the inside of the peninsula & part of Mercury Bay & facing Whitianga & Cooks Beach but to get to it you have to take the long drive over and around the top, right to Opito and then over the top again and down into the bay. As already mentioned, we have anchored & overnighted in this bay ready for our run home to Tauranga in the morning, it has deep water & is a beautiful sea green colour.

We had lunch (when a cock pheasant strutted past us) at Otama Beach which looks out over another one of our happy boating areas, Great Mercury Island.

I think we need a new sun umbrella, this one is a little short!

 

We then headed back past Kuaotunu to look at Gray & Rings Beaches which we hadn’t been aware of before. They were both smaller lovely white sand beaches which looked to have been the old traditional holiday spots of this part of the Coromandel going by the iconic kiwi baches lining the roadside.  The rocks & boulders piled in the corner at the end of Rings Beach made an interesting pattern, it looked like they’d been blown there in a big storm. No doubt they’ve been there for thousands of years.

 

The road continued around the point to Matarangi Beach, a very popular holiday “resort”. I never like calling them resorts in New Zealand because they are nothing like the beach resorts that we’ve visited overseas. These just happen to be more popular holiday spots & sometimes they come with a flash golf course. And no, we didn’t play Matarangi Dad.

Bluff Road probably shaved about 10 minutes off the trip had we taken the normal route to Matarangi, back along the main road. This wasn’t called Bluff Road for nothing, now this was a winding, narrow road. Used more by locals than anybody I would think. It had some great fishing spots in amongst the rocks.

On the way home we stopped to see if David could pick out his sister’s old house in amongst the bush on the main road at Kuaotunu, his memory wasn’t  that great so while he was thinking about it I did as all good photographers do, never miss an opportunity of taking a shot! J

 

Whangapoua & the Singing Sand

We travelled across the range from Coromandel township with no problems although it was a tough struggle up the steep first section. This road had a gravel section not too long ago but it’s now totally sealed. There was a lot of traffic on the road including a group of bikers that were stretched out for just about the whole distance. We had to watch for them on the blind corners, a few got a bit of a fright. Unfortunately the car park at the lookout was full & we couldn’t pull in so I was unable to grab some photos of both sides of the peninsula and it was such a clear day too.

Friends who have a bach (holiday home) in Whangapoua had offered us their driveway to park in for a few nights which was a very much appreciated gesture from them as there is definitely no freedom camping in this beautiful part of the Coromandel.  We even have a power point to plug into too, which is an added bonus. We checked out their drive on arrival but it was a little too narrow to back into but thankfully they have an arrangement with the neighbouring bach owners & we were able to back the van in down their side of the fence. Perfect! Thanks very much Jess & Ian,

Whangapoua is a typical New Zealand seaside resort that at the moment is a very sleepy little settlement with dozens of baches from the very flash & expensive jobs; now called holiday homes, to the iconic & very typical Kiwi bach. I can see that this little place would be a hive of activity & extremely busy over the summer holidays. Whangapoua looks out toward the Mercury Islands; an area we were very familiar with when we had our boat. It has a beautiful white sand crescent shaped ocean beach and the sand actually squeaks as you walk over it. This is caused by quartz sand and I’ve heard that overseas, white sand beaches are called “singing beaches” because of the sound.

 

The northern end of the beach is dominated by a small island called Pungapunga which in Maori means yellow.

 

On the evening that we arrived we drove back to check out the small wharf located on the huge estuary that we’d seen as we followed the road into the beach. We’d love to explore this area in a small boat, there would be an amazing amount of birds living & feeding in the estuary. It was high tide and there were a couple of keen fishermen trying their luck off the jetties. The water was crystal clear & we could actually see a lot of fish swimming around the jetty poles, David decided he might like to come back & try his luck later.

Today we took a short walk out to Opera Point which forms one side of the entrance to the estuary. Luckily is was half tide so I could get around to the point but there was nothing on the sign board pointing out that you’d probably not make it at full tide. In fact the track was a tad confusing & while David thought it must end when we got to the sand banks of the estuary I followed footsteps around the point to where there were some lovely rock formations & this rock with a hole in it. I’m guessing this is where the opera reference comes into it.

 

After the walk I left David fishing at the wharf, in fact it wasn’t quite the wharf, one of the boat skippers gave him a couple of tips to fish back where the channel buoys were, he had no luck & kept getting his gear snagged. I walked back home taking some photos of the interesting house numbers & names along the way.

I also ventured down each of the beach access ways to check out the view, this caught my eye & made me smile.

But where are the oars? ;)