I'm Still Smiling

We've now left Simpson's Beach and have made our way the short distance around to Hot Water Beach where we are plugged into the grid again at the Top 10 Holiday Park, we needed to empty tanks, recharge batteries & plug into the internet before we head south into the bush again at Broken Hill. But most of all I had a whole heap of washing to do & dry while it was sunny, I don't mind hand washing smalls but I draw the line at towels & sheets; I take my hat off to my foremothers though, washing must have been a terrible chore (& bore). The sooner we have a 12v washing machine the better! We also wanted to check out the beaches on this side of Mercury Bay.

After getting set up at this very lovely holiday park, it's only 4 years old & is very spacious & well appointed, we took a walk over to Hot Water Beach as it was just about low tide. And as most Kiwis would know at low tide on a tiny section of this beautiful beach, hot water bubbles up through the sand from two springs that are located about 2 kilometres below ground. And if you can dig yourself a hole the seawater & hot water mix and form a natural hot pool for you to soak in. This is only possible though for about 2 hours either side of low tide. You can hire a spade for $5 from various shops & camps in the area if you forget to bring one :) That's a nice little money earner too.

Hot Water Beach

You can see from the picture above that Hot Water Beach looks a lot like the others we've visited in recent days; isolated, nobody about, well just about nobody, the odd person walking but generally deserted so it was a bit of a surprise to see quite a lot of activity happening when we arrived.

In the end I couldn't believe my eyes, it was kind of surreal, there were dozens & dozens of people coming and going and digging holes and trying to fit into them. So many nationalities, young & old & so many different languages being spoken too. All trying to claim their patch of sand, there were some elaborate & deep holes with sand banks holding out the waves. Lots of people with cameras, some with beer & chips, some in their clothes & some with hardly anything on. What a spectacle, it really made me laugh. Someone did a great marketing job in selling Hot Water Beach to the tourists. It's a pity some of the other "Hot Water Beaches" around NZ aren't more accessible. Or maybe it's just as well they aren't.

In the meantime enjoy looking at the photos, they still make me smile now, actually they make me shake my head in disbelief. Click on them if you want more detail ;)

Bottom centre- who's the cool dude in the sombrero

Bottom right- this guys got his beer ready to go & is that a whale bottom left?

That's a dashing pair of yellow togs & love the guy with the tats hair-do!

Left centre- who on earth brought their tripod & then set it up in the middle of the melee!
And who is kicking sand in that baby's eyes

 

 

Someone even brought their chilly-bin

 

309

That’s the 309 Road, a road that strikes fear in the most ardent Coromandel traveller. The 309 is the “shortcut” route between Whitianga & Coromandel township, all gravel & all winding, straight up & over the range.

The signs say it all. But in fact again, after the roads we’ve been on lately this one was a doodle. We’d even take the fifth-wheeler over it if we had to. Not that we have any intention of doing that but still if we ever had to, we’d be up for it.

I wanted to visit the Waiau Kauri Grove & Falls which looked like it wasn’t that far down the road but in fact as it turned out was only 8kms from the other end, just down the road from the Mussel Kitchen, where we had lunch a couple of weeks ago!

It was lovely to see so much Rata flowering right through all the native bush and especially on the trees near the roadside.  Rata, along with the pohutukawa,  belong to the myrtle tree family. It is under considerable threat caused by browsing possums; an imported pest destroying a native parasite. Rata are epiphytes, they start life in the canopy of the trees and send their roots down to the ground where the roots slowly thicken & enclose the host tree, killing it and taking over the dead structure. A rata tree can be huge, growing up to 25 metres high, with a 2.5 metre wide trunk.

It was only a short walk through lovely native bush to the kauri, a magnificent grove of about 12 huge trees that have been there for well over 600 years, young by kauri standards. A kauri somewhere else in NZ was aged at over 4000 years old when it died. It is unclear how these kauri survived the intensive logging (plundering) that happened over the Coromandel from 1880 to 1930 but these were located on mining land & it’s thought the company may have restricted the loggers. 

The trees remained undisturbed until WWII when the government  wanted the timber to aid the war effort. The locals were unimpressed and formed what is thought to be the first Coromandel conservation action group. Much to their amazement their plea was heard by Wellington & a reserve  was  established  around the kauri trees. The biggest kauri in the grove measures  1.9 metres through & 6 metres around it’s trunk & it’s 16 metres to the first branch. The biggest Kauri ever measured, Kairaru, had a 20 metre girth and was twice as high as the tallest kauri in this grove. That is humungous!

Next stop were the Waiau Falls which were just down the road, a lovely place for these tourists to have their lunch. Unusual falls too in the way the water fell & hit a centre rock then spilled either side. I bet when the river is in full flow the effect wouldn’t have been quite the same.

 

After the falls it was time to head back over to the other side and it was then that we met these trucks on the road, four of them in total. Not so bad as we had warning that they were coming, they were dumping more gravel on the road. Back & forward all day long, a huge quarry was at the beginning of the road. Very handy for the 309.

We stopped at a couple of lovely reserves beside the river on the way home, this one was called the 309 Waterhole. How would you like to cross this every time you needed to drive to town. There were a couple of houses up the drive, David was trying to decide if he would cross it or not, in the end he decided he wasn’t going to be a hero even though he got me to cross it to check out the depth! J

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

 

Endless Summer

New Zealand has 16,000kms of coastline, how lucky are we all to have beaches like these on our doorstep. These are all within a 20km drive of where we are staying at the moment.

 

I'll let the photos do the talking......  

Otama Bay

Otama Bay



Otama Bay

From Black Jacks Road; Opito Bay

 

Opito Bay

 

Opito Bay

  

Matapaua Bay

 

Matapaua Bay

Kuaotunu, Gray, Rings, & Matarangi Beaches

 

Rings Beach

Matarangi Beach

 

Matarangi Beach

Great Mercury Island from Otama Beach

Simpson’s Beach, Whitianga

I can tell you, I’m seriously getting sick of hearing waves out of my bedroom window! Not.

We are parked up by some large pines in another sheep paddock beside another beautiful beach. This is Simpsons Beach, named after the Simpson family that own most of the land around here. We’re at another LCP site, that’s short for “Low Cost Parking”, where you’re welcome to stay as long as you’re fully self-contained; this one is only $5 a night. Now that is cheap. Simpsons Beach is very well known & I’ve heard that the paddock is packed to the gunwales over the summer months. Tonight there are just five of us parked up, the nearest van is a good 100 metres away. 

The Simpson farm is 1000 acres and has been in the family since 1927, 86 year old Mr Simpson greeted us at the office(his backdoor) & when David mentioned that he’d known the camp site from when he visited Whitianga back in the 70’s, Mr Simpson told us that they were a dairy farm back then & the campers used to come to the shed for their milk, thruppence for a billy can.

That's us, the second shiny spot under the big pines at the end of the beach

Simpsons Beach is at the bottom of Mercury Bay, alongside Buffalo Beach and about 5kms from Whitianga town. We’re in familiar territory now having spent many hours cruising around Mercury Bay and berthed at Whitianga Marina when we weren’t visiting the Mercury Islands. Whitianga also holds many happy memories for David, his parents lived at Harbour Lights, overlooking Whitianga, back in the early ‘70s which was not long after they emigrated to New Zealand. David’s sister & husband owned the local Four Square store & he spent many weekends & holidays driving to & from Auckland to visit them all & to fish & dive in the area. The Four Square is long gone but while waiting for our Fish ‘n Chip lunch David spotted an old photo on the wall that had a section of the store in it. Obviously this is well before Jackie & Bob owned it.

Four Square on the right

After getting the van set up & levelled; we’re getting very good at packing & unpacking now that we’ve moved so often, we both have out routines & check lists to follow and it doesn’t take too long at all, we headed off to town to see if much had changed since our last visit. We had a wander through town, fish ‘n chips on the beach for a late lunch & then a stroll back along the river to the marina with a stop to watch the ferry that takes people across the estuary to Ferry Landing, the oldest stone wharf in Australasia built in 1837. There are quite a number of fabulous beaches on the otherside that run along the southern side of Mercury Bay & around onto the eastern coast. These are 46 kilometres away by vehicle due to a very large estuary that takes a big bite out of the land.

We spent a bit of time at the wharf watching a skipper & his first mate getting ready to go fishing. The boat was a commercial long liner & they were baiting up the hundreds of hooks, makes the recreational fishermen’s limit of two lines with 25 hooks each look a little puny! They’ll leave port around 4am tomorrow and be back mid afternoon with their catch, mainly snapper but including gurnard & tarakihi. The boat travels at 5knots while the line is fed out the back, the first mate clipping each baited hook onto the line as it passes him by, hence the carefully placed baited hooks onto the square board that looks a lot like a weaving loom to me!