The last few days have been quick, always on the move. In hindsight, maybe I could have passed up some of where I went, but you never know! What if I missed the best thing on the whole trip?
On the 26th, after a Christmas that didn’t really feel like Christmas, I set off for the Coromandel Peninsula. New Zealand has a lot of peninsulas if you hadn’t noticed so far! On a map it doesn’t really seem that far from Rotorua, but it was, at least timewise. I’ve finished a whole audiobook in the past few days! I’ve actually finished 5 now, since starting this trip! And 2 e-books. I probably would have another one finished by now, if I hadn’t decided to pick up Les Miserables as my next e-book (I’m 12% done of a like 1200 page book!).
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| View from the summit of Mount Paku. |
Coromandel day involved a lot of very different things. The first place I stopped at Tairua to hike up to the Mount Paku summit lookout. I honestly don’t even remember what made me stop there. I think I was looking at Google Maps and trying to find somewhere to stop and take a break and noticed the little purple camera that highlights the spot as a tourist/scenic stop so I said, “that sounds good!” What I hadn’t looked at before hand was how short and steep the trail was. From the parking lot to the summit is was only .33 miles long, but I ascends 278 feet in that .33 miles! But the view from up there was worth the effort!
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| Archway at Cathedral Cove |
From there I continued north to Cathedral Cove, which not to be confused with Cathedral Cave. Cathedral Cave was where I stopped on the South Island that was the sea cave, only accessible at low tide. This place, too, involved the sea and holes in rocks though. Maybe they need to get a bit more creative on the names. Cathedral Cove is in Hahei. They actually had a parking lot outside of town and you took a shuttle to the trailhead, which was probably a smart idea. Way too many cars in town, otherwise. The trail down to the beach about 300 feet down from the cliff-side to the beach where Cathedral Cove is (though there were multiple ups and downs bringing the total descent to 700 feet).
At the bottom is a beach, and to your left is a giant archway through which you can walk to another beach. There are tall rocks in the middle of the the water. It was a neat beach. Rather crowded. There were lots of people playing in the water, but I just let my ankles get wet because I hadn’t come prepared to get in the water and definitely wasn’t hiking back up in soaking wet shorts. Can’t we say “chaffing!” otherwise?!
One thing was rather crazy, was down at the bottom, if you though, “there is no way I’m hiking back up that!” because I’m sure there were a lot of people not prepared for the hike to get there. I saw lots of flipflops. I was at least in my Tevas which were firmly attached to my feet with (gasp!) socks on. But anyways, at the bottom you could catch a water taxi back to town if you didn’t want to hike back up. I was imagining a water taxi just being a regular boat, and I totally wasn’t sure how that was going to work. Turns out they took a page out of SpongeBob’s book and it was a boat that had wheels that lowered down when they got close to land and then could go up once in the water! It was crazy cool!
From Cathedral Cove I had to figure out where in the world I was staying because I didn’t have anywhere booked. That turned out to be somewhat tricky and I ended up paying for that, by staying in a more expensive hotel than I really wanted to be in. But it did have nice gardens! I wouldn’t be surprised if it is a part-time wedding venue. Not for any large sort of wedding, but something small. It was very cute. The location of the hotel also made the decision for me on whether I was going all the way around the Coromandel Peninsula, or cutting across the middle of it. I ended up going the whole way because of the hotel’s location.
The next day was the day I was going to cut back through Auckland. Really it was a day with a bunch of driving. Boooo! I stopped at the Auckland Botanic Gardens for a break from driving (they’re free). I continued north out of Auckland up to Whangarei. And oh boy, was the traffic insane! I don’t know what traffic is normally like, but I’m assuming it was way worse than if I had been there 3 weeks ago. All the kids are off school. Christmas just happened. It’s summer. Everyone is apparently heading to Northland for the summer!
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| Whangarei Falls |
When I got to Whangarei, I had to at least get out and do something, so I “hiked” a trail from Whangarei Falls to Paranui Falls. I was so impressed by both falls! So big, right on the edge of town! There were people swimming at the falls and in the creek between the two falls.
The place I booked to stay that evening was a hostel called The Cell Block. It is literally a hostel in the old town jail. My room was a cell with a slightly narrow mattress on a platform. It was kind of cool and kind of weird at the same time. But not often that you get to sleep in an old jail. Oddly this wasn’t the first time though. We once stayed in a hotel in San Antonio that was an old jail. Though it didn’t maintain really any semblance to a jail, while this one was very much still jail-like.
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| The Cell Block in Whangarei |
I would say I got up early the next morning, but the truth is that most of this trip I’ve been getting up early and going to bed early, so the fact I needed to be up by 6:15 wasn’t really much of a thing. I had to get going because it was a scuba diving day! I had been looking forward to this dive outing because Poor Knights Islands is considered the best place to dive in New Zealand. The day we had before us looked great for diving! Swells on the water were basically nothing, and while it wasn’t super warm, it wasn’t cold. Sometimes the sun came out.
What makes Poor Knights Islands such a great place to dive is the fact that it gets both cold water and tropical fish there. The location of the Knights is such that the EAC (if you recall your Finding Nemo trivia, you’ll recall the East Australian Current), comes down the coast of Australia and cuts across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand and the Knights. This means the Knights get a tropical fish that you otherwise wouldn’t find in New Zealand. And even warmer water sea creatures. Sweeeeet!
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| Me at Sugarloaf dive site. While I didn't have a camera, our divemaster did! |
Because there wasn’t much in the name of waves, they took us to Sugarloaf Rock, which is also called one of the Squires of Poor Knights Islands. I was diving with Dive Tutukaka and they were fantastic! They split us up into groups of 5-6 people, each with our own divemaster. Our’s was named Sharon and she was super excited that we were going to be able to do Sugarloaf because that isn’t a site they get to do a lot. It was going to be a cold water dive, though not as cold as Kaikoura. But still we were diving in 7mm wetsuits, with an additional vest, so our core was basically covered in about 12mm worth of layers. I was cool, but never got to cold.
Before we even got in the water we knew it was going to be good because fish were schooling up on the surface. The birds were in a frenzy with the fish thrashing up top. We dropped down right near the wall into a world of kelp with some coral after doing some buoyancy checks (10kg worth of weights with all those layers on! Around 10-14lbs heavier than I normally dive with). There were schools of fish, some of which were blue with black dots, and some that were black with blue dots. And there were large schools of other fish swimming all around us. We had only been down for a few minutes when we saw our first ray; one probably 5-6ft across. Shortly after we saw a second. In total, by the end of the dive, we had seen 5, ranging in size from probably 2 feet to 7 feet!!! I’ve never seen so many rays on a dive before! By the time we surfaced, I had declared it one of my favorite dives I’ve ever done. Definitely a solid top 10, maybe even top 5.
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| A ray at Sugarloaf dive site. |
On our surface interval they served up hot chocolate and tea to help is warm up a bit. We made our way from the Squires over the the proper Knights. We reached Riko Riko Cave, which is a huge sea cavern. We had a pretty large dive boat, and I bet you could have fit at least 6 more of them in this cave. The cave is actually the largest sea cave by volume in the world! We moved from there off along Aorangi Island to Tawhiti Rahi Island where Middle Arch is located. This would be our second dive site.
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| School of fish, probably at Sugarloaf. |
At Middle Arch, there was, as you would expect, and archway. While the arch makes for a neat formation above water, what you don’t see is that underwater it changes the makeup of the plant life. Out in the cove near Middle Arch there is loads of seaweed, kelp. But as you move closer to the arch, due to sunlight and such, the kelp disappears and is replaced by sponges. The archway itself is almost devoid of kelp. While the previous dive was all about rays, this one was about eels of different varieties. I believe I saw 6 of them. The weird thing is you saw them out and not just their heads sticking out of some hidey hole like is normal. These eels you could see from nose to tail, just sitting there enjoying life. Also at this dive site there is an underwater cave you can surface in. There is an actual airpocket in it. It was big enough that the 6 of us could all fit in there together. After leaving the cave we ventured back into the kelp where we did see one ray of probably about 3-4ft in size. When we surfaced I had decided that dive was probably a Top 5 dive.
Poor Knights Island is a place that would be worth doing multiple days worth of diving. It’s about an hour boat ride out there, so you bring a lunch with you to eat on the boat between dives. There are plenty more dive sites out there. Our divemasters said they’ve seen everything from sharks to rays to turtles to whales to dolphins to tropical fish to coldwater fish there. And on the ride back to shore we found outselves caught up in a pod of common dolphins, having fun. They are cool looking dolphins. Their coloring is grey and white. They’re smaller than bottlenose dolphins, but not as small as the Hector’s Dolphins I had seen down at Curio Bay.
After getting back to shore, I began my drive up to Paihia where I was staying at my last hostel for the trip. Paihia is located in the part of New Zealand called the Bay of Islands. The Bay of Islands is very important in New Zealand history because this is where the Maori history is said to have begun, as well as the European history. The Maori are said to have landed here first upon their journey from Hawaiki. A couple hundred years later, Captain Cook showed up here.
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| The Treaty House and lawn where the Waitangi Treaty was signed granting New Zealand independence. |
Waitangi, just to the north of Paihia, is a very important historical place in New Zealand. It is there that New Zealand officially became a country, after the signing of the Waitangi Treaty between the Maori and the British. I learned all of this after spending a very rainy morning at the Waitangi Treat Grounds where they have a museum, a cultural center, and the house where the Englishman who was sent to help push the treaty along lived. It is out front of this house that the Waitangi Treaty was signed on February 6, 1840. The Waitangi Treaty actually followed the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand, which was signed in October 1835. The two are essential to the New Zealand governance and the way the Maori have been treated as an entity in the country.
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| The ceremonial Waka at Waitangi that is pulled out every February for Waitangi Day festivities. |
Following some education, I continued up and around towards my home for the night. On the way I stopped and did some much needed reorganizing, as I’m nearing the end of my trip and will be dropping my car off in just 2 days. I needed to get my suitcase ready for more stuff to be added to it. For the past month, it has sat in the back of my car, while I take my backpack and other small travel bag inside with my things. That way I didn’t have to haul my large suitcase everywhere. After getting that taken care of, I stopped at a beach, because it was still rather early. I enjoyed the waves, walking up and down the beach. The water feels cool, but that sort of water where you would soon get used to it and be fine, but then like an hour later finally start to feel a bit cold and like you need to get out. There were plenty of kids playing in it.
My home for the night is a small “treehouse”. It’s not really in a tree, but more surrounded by trees. It’s kind of fun. I sat outside and ate my supper, and then moved inside when the wind got a bit insane. Now the birds are chatting outside and the sun is setting.
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| My treehouse! |
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