Sunday, February 25, 2007

Whitianga

Post two...

So, we collected my parents from Auckland airport very early on Sunday morning. A brief pause to sort out the rental car and we were away. It was great to see them and not at all bizarre (I think if they'd arrived straight to Wellington and we'd had them in "normal life" straight away it would have been more strange...but taking a week to get them here made it less odd).
We made our way from Auckland to the Coromandel Peninsula, stopping for various photo opportunities and cafe breaks.
We made it to Whitianga (on the eastern edge of the Peninsula - which is the smaller sticky-uppy bit at the top of the North Island for those wanting to identify it on a map) early afternoon and found our B&B. All good. The rest of the day was mostly taken up with wandering and food. Food became a major theme of the holiday (no surprises there...along with wine...) and I need to be really good for a few weeks to stop feeling quite so sluggish and ugh!

On Monday, we went to Cathedral Cove in the morning. It was a pretty decent walk down (particularly when we chose to take some of the side tracks) and the cove itself was definitely worth the walk. We stayed and enjoyed the beach for a while, including numerous games of running away for me & Husbink - parents didn't quite get into the swing of that one! The only slight disappointment was that the weather wasn't fantastic - it was fine but not nice enough to sit on a beach or get properly in the sea at any point. Hey ho! So Monday afternoon involved more strolls on beaches that weren't warm enough to sit on and...more food!




On Tuesday we left Whitianga and started the journey to Rotorua. On the way we stopped at Hot Water Beach which was a highlight of the trip - at least in part cos I got to try out my new togs for the first time. :) So, what you do is...rent a spade, get down to the beach and start digging! There are thermal springs under the sand so if you get the right spot, you get lovely warm (or in some cases owwwww HOT) water coming up for you to sit in and enjoy - until the next wave comes in and cools it all down. There was one area that was the best so there were lots of people there - with all the men building up big walls around the area while the women reclined and enjoyed the waters. Husbink and I got in the hottest part for a while and then rushed to the sea to cool down, much fun until a crab latched itself onto my foot!


We then found an area just on the edge of the sea where if you dug your feet down into the sand, you reached the hot water pretty quick and then just waited for the next wave to cool you off. Was good.




The road to Rotorua was a heck of a lot slower and more wiggly than expected. So we didn't get to stop all that much which seemed a bit of a waste of a journey but as parents were still jetlagged the need to get to the next destination was pretty huge! And that shall be the next post...

1 comment:

doctor/woman said...

ooo sounds like lots of fun. must be v nice to see parents after long time away. xxx