2 - Southern Coromandel.

I was rather pleased today to wake up and find the weather was in keeping with the weather forecast because today I was paying not insignificant amounts of money to go kayaking to Cathedral Cove. So I packed a second pair of clothes and a towel in my car and headed off to Hahei where the kayaks awaited.

I arrived at the beach and was introduced to the New Zealander guide and the two fellow Brits who would be joining us and we soon set off across the water towards Motueka Island. This was only a few kilometres but when you are in a kayak in open water getting anywhere seems to take ages. I get the impression that this is due to there being no close by landmarks so as you move through the water the changing parallax of the distant trees, cliffs and other objects becomes awfully laboured, like looking into the distance from a moving train for example. Maybe we were actually just slow, but whatever the reason kayaking over a large expanse of water always feels like an awful lot of effort for not much return. Perhaps travelling near the speed of light under your own steam feels like this, I thought. Anyway the tour guide was telling us about the marine reserve that was set up in the area that bans fishing within its boundaries. Since it was set up in 1993 the marine life has increased “sixteen hundred percent” as the he put it, so there is now sixteen times more marine life in the area than before, pretty good going. He also told us that a Maori chief who settled the area saw Motueka Island, our destination, and claimed it looked a body part of his and that we had to guess what he said it was. The island had a central rounded peak with two rounded valleys that ended in two other peaks that were lower than the central one. The reason he claimed the island to look like a part of him and get his tribe to agree on the matter is because that gave him the jurisdiction to ascend the feature and claim all the land he could see from it for himself, simple as. As we neared the island all three of us had no idea what the feature resembled, so begrudgingly the tour guide told us that he claimed it to look like his nose. He obviously had imagination!

We circumnavigated the island and saw seals lounging blithely on some pretty jagged rocks. They all glanced up briefly to inspect the newcomers and then dropped their heads down again as if we weren’t worth the effort. After negotiating a natural sea tunnel we made a beeline for Cathedral Cove. En route there was a solitary penguin, solitary not being its species name but rather because the vast majority of its species would be hanging around the south of the South Island at this time of year, poor (or just retarded) penguin.

Cathedral cove, it turns out, not only contains one tourist attraction, but two, the most photographed rock in New Zealand (apparently) lies in the cove too. This is Sail rock, which does actually resemble a sail. It is a stack with a vertical side and a slightly sloping side and the base is the narrowest point of the whole structure like the mast of a ship. The cove is named after a naturally formed cave which has the profile of a gothic cathedral window, which I think it pretty accurate description too. Not that there's a competition or that nomenclature even matters but so far it’s two-nil to the Europeans on realistic natural feature name resemblances. Although if I had the chance of gaining all the land I could see from a point then I would claim any salient feature to look like anything of mine, left foot, index finger, gall bladder etc, even if it was just an amorphous pile of rocks.

We stayed in the cove for a while and had biscuits and hot drinks prepared for us whilst we inspected the cave. Access through the cave was banned because recently some rocks had fallen from the ceiling and, in an unexpected health and safety spectacle, bright yellow warning signs and yellow rope was strung across both entrances. Other unexpected news was when I heard they are going to put concrete on the ceiling of this natural wonder to avoid further rock falls from happening, but I suppose there’s not much else that they can do.

We soon departed Cathedral Cove and rounded the headland into Stingray Bay, so named because of the large amounts of stingrays, of Steve Irwin infamy, that frequent the bay. Thankfully they still frequent the bay and they can be seen against the white sandy floor moving in no particular hurry from one random bit of sand to another. They first appeared as slow moving dark blobs barely discernable from small rocks but as the water cleared and sharp outlines and colours became discernable their form became obvious; they were diamond (square) in shape with a tail from one corner. They made absolutely no threatening manoeuvres or actions but just serenely swam and minded their own business as they passed under the kayaks. So why anyone would want go out of their way to kill these creatures in the aftermath of Steve Irwin’s death I really can’t understand.

The next bay had another unimaginative but factually accurate name; Gemstone Bay. At one time gemstones were discovered here in what must have been noticeably larger numbers than on a normal beach. But alas, the chances of finding any here now are much diminished as humans have scoured the area pretty much clean of them. What most distinguished this bay now was the self guided snorkelling tour. This involved a series of ropes which connected several floating buoys adorned with local wildlife information boards so snorkelers would know what wildlife they were seeing around them. I looked for a board that said ‘Great White Shark’, because they do live in these waters and have mauled eleven people, possibly snorkellers, to death around New Zealand so far, but there was no information on them at all. After this we headed back to the beach at Hahei where the trip was over but at least I didn’t have to sit in several centimetres of water any more, yippee.

I spent the rest of the day just meandering around the area, I went to the rope swing put up by a local fireman because the kids would put rope swings up any way and he decided he could tie a safer rope swing than they could. I also went to Cooks beach where the road signs directing me towards the town centre ceased when I reached a place with three shops next to the road, I never did find the town centre. After this is retired to the backpackers in Whitianga for the evening.

The next day, today, would be an unplanned day of many beaches as I drove from Whitianga to Karangahake. My first unplanned stop was in a place called Tairua which had an unusually high and pointy hill on its seafront so without hesitation I took the next left and aimed my car towards it. The bottom two thirds of the hill was a big housing estate demonstrating the aesthetics of houses pretty much anywhere in New Zealand despite being in such an unusual and beautiful location. I wound my way through here and found a car park from where I began my perambulation to the summit. The views from the summit were amazingly spectacular, the sea was the pale blue you see often on postcards and views over the mountains in the other direction were available in all their verdant splendour, this was a very pleasant place to be. I was jealous of all the locals who could stroll up here before breakfast every morning and still be on time for work. I came across a notice board once more with the geological time scratched off, I’m very intrigued to know who does this.

Once I was on the road again I decided to head to Opoutere beach. The beach path intersects a pine woodland and emerges on the beach which, as I discovered to my delight, was empty apart from a fisherman who was too far away to be of any bother to me. This was such a wonderful place that I had no choice other than to take my book, Corrupted Science, and read in the warm sun and gentle cooling breeze for an hour or so, someone had to do it. I was on the section of religious corruption in science and it turns out the much trumped religion-science war isn’t happening as the media often portrays. The vast majority of people in both groups just want to get on with what they’re doing and let everyone else get on with their lives and work but there are a few who don’t. Some of them have lots of political power, especially in the US and lots of right-winged organizations around the world, and it’s very scary. The chapter ended with stories of how creationists who are also scientists, who do exist and conduct proper science, have come a cropper of corruption and been discredited when they tried to mix their religion with science, fools. But as all good things must come to an end, my time on the beach had to end and to the car I headed.

Later on in the day I got my first view of a live weta, these are large insects, some as big as my hand, and although they are harmless they can bite. I came across the wetas whilst walking into a mine entrance and shone my light at the wall next to me to find a fist sized insect about thirty centimetres from my face. One thing I can say is that they aren’t a pretty sight at any distance, let alone close up. I retreated from the mine after I stared at them for a bit and took pictures because as far as I knew they jump towards movement or light sources like my head torch and this I didn’t want to happen.

I drove down the windiest road in the whole world and arrived in Waihi where there is a huge Cornish engine house and Marth Quarry which is a gold quarry that is more than a trifle big. You shall here more on Waihi in my next post, for now I headed off to The Golden Owl in Karangahake for a good nights rest.

1 - Northern Coromandel, the railway to nowhere and the goat.

After a previous false start to my trip around the Coromandel I set off again, this time virus free. The first leg of my trip took me through Thames which was still as aesthetically uninteresting as before and before I knew it I was on route 25 northbound towards Coromandel. I was told previously that this road was a coastal road and now having driven along this road I understand why Kiwis say they are good at understatements because at some points the road practically was in the sea, I’m sure my car nearly got splashed by waves on a number of occasions. One thing that stuck me along this road as being pretty darn stupid were the locations of some of the houses along the sea front. It’s true that it must have been a rather high high tide but still some of the houses must have been built at most a metre above the water level and in a very active earthquake, and therefore tsunami, region of the planet. If I ever buy or rent a house over here I would like to buy one where the chances of drowning in my own bed as I slept at night, due to a tsunami, being absolutely zero, which patently these houses did not offer. I can just imagine the estate agent’s pamphlet on the house stating: Immaculate sea views, off road parking, potentially won't drown inside, bins collected fortnightly. These were only brief wonderings of thought as the road which consisted mostly of a thin strip of tarmac placed between the undulating grey sea and a vertigo inducing cliff with very few protective barriers so it required very high levels of concentration. On the sharpest bends signs were placed warning of lorries approaching from the middle of the road, these aren’t like British roads, I was definitely entering proper New Zealand now.

I arrived in Coromandel intact and found it to be a rather smaller town than I had envisioned and it still had the feeling of being a mining boom town, I couldn’t tell if this was because it once was one or whether it was a subtle show for the tourists, probably a mixture of both I decided. The main street followed a long and windy course with a small number of shops and cafes which rapidly petered out into generic houses along both sides of the drawn out road, Cormandel isn’t based on a grid pattern though and this pleased me. The deserted streets and closed cafes belied the ‘boom town’ feel of the town, the boom times now depend on the time of year and I was here in the slack time. so I went to the only place that was open and looked interesting, the Gold Stamper Battery. This was a small restored gold stamper where the machinery, powered by the largest waterwheel in New Zealand no less, was demonstrated to tourists on the hour on most days of the week. But for groups of one person or fewer this doesn’t happen so I got a quick talk through of the history of gold mining in the area which was free so not totally galling. The proprietor then invited me to look for gold in the small stream passing through the battery and showed me a piece of rock with some native gold breaking its surface. This he found in the stream and told me there was probably about $1,400 of gold in there. He continued to say:

“If you find any gold there you’ll have to take a picture, let me know that you found it on my property, then undertake some [tests whose names slip my memory] and forty percent of any subsequent profits will go the land owner, me.”

I looked around the stream for a few minutes and as I was leaving he asked.

“Did you find any gold?”

“No.”

I believe he then said “Oh well.” Or something similar but it was muttered in an unsurprised but disappointed manner that any one might utter when you’ve just missed out on a few hundred dollars for zero work.

The light was starting to fade now and I was getting hungry so I headed off to the YHA hostel in Coromandel for a good night’s rest. This was an alright place but you have to walk outside to use the toilet at night and to get a paltry few minutes of warm shower water you need to press a button outside the shower block!

I was going on a railway to nowhere today, well I say nowhere but the Eyefull tower stands at the top of the hill where the railway terminates but even this was constructed so visitors would have somewhere to go when they reached the railway’s end so it really is a railway to nowhere. Not that this put me off paying $25 for this apparently futile endeavour, because as reality just ‘is’, railways are just ‘good’. This is the Driving Creek Railway which began as a humble endeavour by Barry, the owner and railway/pottery enthusiast, who started a pottery and constructed a narrow gauge railway to transport clay from the nearby hill for use in his pottery in Coromandel. This railway extended over time and Barry’s bank manager was becoming concerned that the pottery was not bringing in enough money to service the debt taken out to construct the railway. So Barry decided, against the views of most people he knew, to extend the railway and open it to the paying public and from this the Driving Creek Railway was formed. It’s now one of the biggest tourist attractions in New Zealand.

The lower railway terminus consists of a workshop replete with the materials and machines required to maintain a railway. The pottery is also here. The main line left the station and workshop making a sudden turn towards the sky and swinging out of sight to the right, a sense of wonder lay beyond but first I meandered around the station buildings. Not being one for art I ignored the pottery side and gawked at the workshop for a while before taking my seat at the rear end of the powered carriage. This gave me commanding views as the carriage passed though the verdant Coromandel bush. The railway is being used to remove introduced European trees and to transport native trees back up the hill for planting, as well as this the land has been signed over and will belong to the people of New Zealand so it can’t be developed in future.  As the carriage winded its way towards the Eyefull tower the train has to negotiate two spirals, three tunnels and five reversing points as it slowly gained height for the next twenty five minutes. The Eyefull tower is a wooden structure that looks like the biggest gazebo your have ever seen, it probably has the epithet of being the biggest gazebo-like structure in the southern hemisphere, and offered commanding views over the Hauraki Gulf and Coromandel town, on a good day you can even see as far as Auckland. We stopped here for at most ten minutes and then our Liverpudlian driver and host took us on the whole journey back to the start. What a great little railway this was.

 

I now had most of the day to drive forty three kilometres to Whitianga where I’d be stopping for the next two nights. This involved roads even windier than the previous day but rather than being along the coast these were overland in the Coromandel and this means the word flat is very rarely relevant.

I stopped off at two coastal villages along the road both of which were next to long sandy beaches. I visited both the beaches and found vistas almost like being on a deserted Cornish beach during an anticyclone in the height of summer. The sky was deep blue, the sea was turquoise, the beach was white, there wasn’t another person around to disturb the gentle rhythmic ebb and flow of ankle high waves or the warm sun shining merrily all around. These places could have been on postcards and may well be for all I know. The problem is they’re a bit boring, I mean short of a kayak or a good walking track there isn’t anything to do apart from sit and stare at this idyllic landscape and my mind is far too active for this kind of thing, I need activity.

I soon moved on and found a picnic spot next to the main road that was full of old Cornish mining artefacts, well, probably not literally Cornish but based on Cornish designs and principles, so I could not help but pull over into the shoulder and take a look. There was a goat with large horns and sharp hooves by the roadside and it was tied to a tree, or so I thought as I parked my car and got out. Rather it was karabinered to a rope tied between the tree and a fence post thereby allowing it a rounded off rectangular area, which I happened to be parked in, to roam free. Presumably associating humans with food the goat came and greeted me as I took the first steps from my car, bugger. All appeared well though; I took some pictures of the mining stamps and then got back into my car, just in time for the goat to jump on the bonnet! £$"%^&*. Who on Earth lets a bonnet-jumping goat roam onto a public highway where people have to park to get to a picnic site? seriously who! The scratches were only superficial but still they were still scratches. For the rest of the drive my thoughts took a culinary line of thought: Goat burger, goat kebab, goat and chips, goat steak with engrained tyre tread pattern, fried goat containing fragments of car bumper etc, etc.

Anyway, next stop Whitianga which turned out to be another grid based town that had a dull main street and beach just like the other towns so without much to do I got supplies from a supermarket, sadly they didn’t have any goat burgers, and went to the backpackers.

Thames and the Pinnacles.

I shall start off my three week trip by not starting it at off all but here’s an honorary mention to the trip which was the first attempt which I aborted after two nights because of illness:

I had ventured away from Auckland and for the first time found myself in a new town, Thames (pronounced Temz, like the English river), and able to explore as I pleased. My perambulation took me in a dead straight line along the main street which was full of shops with awnings, I liked the awnings, and the slanted parking spaces that oblige drivers to drive into forwards and reverse onto the road, this I didn’t like. At the end of the main street all of three minutes was taken up so I decided to make a ninety degree turn and walk down another dead straight road to the seafront where I made another ninety degree turn then sidestepped the dead straight seafront road so I could walk along the mangrove-clad seafront. The view was somewhat obscured by the mangroves but it turns out that there isn’t too much of a view over the Firth of Thames anyway so I turned my attention to a miniature railway that goes along the seafront in a vague figure of eight design and has quite an intricate station and goods yard layout, nice.

(The first and longest swing bridge (NZ), rope bridge (UK) on the Pinnacles ascent)

 

Thames is a small town best known for and basically exists because of gold. In 1867 a single flake of gold was discovered in a waterfall near Thames and within months the Thames gold rush began. This led to large scale mining, for its day, around Thames and caused the population to balloon to eighteen thousand people compared to a measly just under seven thousand people today. This also led to the creation of the 'Thames School of Mines and Mineralogical Museum' museum which I decided visit. Two more ninety degree turns and three more dead straight roads later and I was there.

Initially a Sunday school the School of Mines building was quite satisfyingly, in my opinion, converted from religious to educational purposes and the interior remains as it was when the school closed in 1953 and it looked and felt pretty much as I’d expect a Victorian school interior to look. Some of the rooms even looked capable of research into phlogiston. The mineralogical museum was rather well stocked and even had some specimens all the way from Cornwall. I could have spent all day staring at the mineral samples, especially galena, a shiny blue ore of lead that draws your attention almost as well as fire does, but people would think I was weird. I suppose I could have set the place on fire for a valid excuse to stare because everyone stares at fire but the police would probably arrest me for arson, damn.

 

(Some steps on the packhorse route)

My reason for staying in Thames was to ascend the Pinnacles. These are a set of peaks in the Coromandel Peninsula which although not the highest in the local area they have sufficient cragginess to make them stand out from the surrounding hills and still offer rather spectacular views. I drove up the gravel road to the start of the track and in the process had all the rust proof protective coating chipped off the underside of my car by small stones and then began the ascent. The track follows an old packhorse route up the mountain that supplied kauri tree loggers with supplies. The logging began in the 1870’s and they were so successful that by 1928 they had removed all they could and therefore put themselves out of work and destroyed native woodlands, well done. The summit was pretty cold and windy with poor visibility, pretty galling for the walk I had just done. I had the option of waiting to see if the weather would improve from this cold horizontal drizzle so I could have a good view or to head back down the mountain to comfy chairs and a heated TV room with a free DVD library. Needles to say three hours later I was eating chips in a comfy chair watching TVNZ 7. 

 (The pinnacles, shrouded in drizzle)

The Pinnacles walk was very enjoyable and if you like walking then I recommend it, it can be done easily as a day walk or you can stay in the hut near the summit overnight which offers enticements such as cold showers and people who might snore all night so I settled for staying in Thames instead. I decided to head back to Auckland the next day because I was feeling quite ill but before that I ended up watching ‘Death at a Funeral’ which is a light hearted British comedy, which is rather funny.

North Island trip.

This blog has been pretty quiet of late but all that is about to change. I have been travelling around the North Island for the last three weeks and in lieu of my own computer I have only been able to access public computers for half an hour or so or have had to pay as much as $2.00 for half an hour, but now I’m back in Auckland with a permanent internet connection.

The trip took me in a clockwise(ish) route around the North Island, I visited most of the main towns and travelled 3,154.7km (1,971.6miles) along some of the most boring and most interesting roads in the country. A map of where I travelled is below:

I shall update this blog in sections every few days and during this time you will hear about a railway that goes to nowhere in particular, why all goats should die, how to move a Cornish engine house over 300 metres whilst keeping it in one piece, the first thing you notice about Rotorua, wind turbines in Hawkes Bay that only blow air around, the suburb of Camborne which differs somewhat from the Camborne I’m so ‘dearly’ acquainted to in Cornwall, GTA imitation in Wanganui and many more exciting things that happened.

If you aren’t excited then you should be...

Piha and Kitekite waterfall.

There is a place called Piha on the coast west of Auckland region and this was my destination for the day. I set off on a course through the city which I had etched into my brain with many mental trial runs because when the road signs mostly don’t say where the roads go and every road looks pretty much identical to the next you need to know precisely where you are going. All was going well until I reached a roundabout, fine, you would have thought, they work to precisely the same rules and in the same direction as roundabouts in the UK which I have navigated happily and without incident for six years. But getting all a-posteriori about this, I have to say they’re pretty awful over here, New Zealand drivers don’t seem to know how to use them. When approaching a roundabout in the UK you scan all the entrance lanes and immediately you can tell which exit each driver is going to take when they are still fifty metres from the roundabout and 99% of the time you will be absolutely correct. The remaining one percent of drivers I shall quite presumptuously and unscientifically accuse of being Kiwi drivers on holiday in the UK. Anyway, I ended up sitting waiting to pull onto the roundabout, letting gaps go by and making attempts to pull out as people meandered their cars in front of mine. But eventually I made a successful break for freedom and left the driver behind me to make reason of the strange twirly thing in front of him.

There were no other roundabouts on the roads to Piha, this was good. The roads leave Auckland and head through the Waitakere ranges which border the urban extent of Auckland but despite this proximity they are very well forested and quite undeveloped, it’s not uncommon for people to go missing here and never be found. I don’t think there is a British equivalent to this, everywhere is too urban. I drove through the Waitakere’s sub-tropical flora and unlike the UK there were no little villages with post offices and naively presuming ‘Thank you for driving carefully though our village’ signs as you leave the village.

 (Piha Beach)

The road arrives in Piha at quite an altitude and I got several quite good millisecond views of Piha beach and Lion Rock as I guided my car down the steep winding road to the beach car park. I parked my car and began walking towards Lion Rock, this is a large stack raising roughly one hundred metres out of the beach and at every high tide it becomes an island. There is a path that climbs to the top and this was where I was aiming for, however, there was a river in the way, a deeper than the water proofing on my boots type river. Being too lazy to take my boots off and walk across, I found a narrow section, stared at it for a bit, took some steps back, narrowly avoiding walking into someone, took my run up and jumped. Thud. You didn’t think I wouldn’t make it did you? With my still dry feet I headed straight up Lion Rock. Unfortunately you can only climb half way up the rock because a land slip nearer the top makes it too dangerous to continue. It must be extremely dangerous for New Zealand to deem somewhere unsafe. I spent the rest of my time on the beach wondering where the original path went and never worked out where it could have gone, it must have been a big landslide! 

(Lion Rock, only partially climbable)

(The current path stops half way up the right hand side of this picture and the closed way up is somewhere in the picture above, I think I can see a 'path' but not a path)

There was a good view of Piha from half way up the rock, the houses were all spread out and based on some desultory plan. The town wasn't good on the eye from the outside but looking away from the town from within probably would be a good view, hence why people want to live there.

(Piha, a town with some houses in-between trees)

I decided to head back to the car now and go to the Kitekite waterfall in the hills behind Piha. This was a fairly easy ramble following a stream and it led to some good viewing locations of the falls. This was a pleasant walk through trees, the ubiquitous view-blocking trees of New Zealands 'scenic' areas, and was very relaxing. 

 (Trees)

All was well, then I heard the voices of people and children and they were getting louder and then they arrived and were being where I wanted to be and making noise! I moved on to the base of the falls and there were more people there, the worst kinds, children and whole family groups and they were having fun and taking pictures and laughing and splashing water and forcing me to politely stop through my own volition to avoid being in their pictures. Grrrrrrr. Why can’t they all go home and stop sharing the Waitakere’s with me, why! Maybe I should avoid coming here on the first day of the school holidays to avoid slight irritation next time. The falls were quite impressive, they weren’t a single drop but six distinct steps where the water runs over the rocks. When the area was logged a dam was built at the top of the falls to contain enough water to release and wash logs down to the base of the waterfall. This was a common practise to transport logs but at Kitekite this was met with mostly broken logs, I can see why, and they never used it for the same purpose again. 

 

(Kitekite falls)

I headed back to my car along the longest section of wooden steps in the whole world and drove back home though Auckland. Not via a roundabout this time.

It’s only noisy if people can hear it.

Would I like to go off roading today? YES!

A bit more than two hours later I was at the meeting point with all the other off roaders and much to my chagrin there were no Land Rovers. They were all Japanese vehicles like Mitsubishi and Toyota which from an engineering and off-road capability may even outcompete Land Rovers, but that’s not the point, they just aren’t Landys. In the UK if you say you go off roading then expect the question “what type of Land Rover have you got then?” because no one seriously buys a foreign 4x4! Well, some people might have a Suzuki Vitara but only because of lack of money which is an acceptable reason but apart from that nothing short of a full frontal lobotomy is a good reason not to have a Landy. Anyway, not being able to call them Landys, because they wern't, led to a predicament, I kept blaspheming by calling the 4x4’s ‘cars' by mistake.

I took my seat in the passengers side and we headed off down a ‘paper road’ which is the equivalent of a green lane in the UK and this took us to a proper public highway which was also the beach. In the UK beaches are beaches and roads are roads and they never mix. You can drive on the beach on Pendine Sands in Wales but one major difference between here and Wales is that here you’ll be splatting insects and not tourists on the windscreen.

 (Paper road to the beach)

We left the beach after several minutes of travelling and started driving down tracks that led through the sand dunes and into an area used for training by the New Zealand military so there is ordnance, exploded and unexploded, in the area. We were intercepted by the local ranger which I found strange because usually I am the one on the rangers side of things by doing conservation voluntary work or just being irked by the noise of the engines, especially motocross bikes, they are sooooo irritating. The ranger appeared unperturbed by us, I suppose though that being in the New Zealand wilderness which is vast and unpopulated compared to the UK there isn’t anyone close enough to be irritated by us and the military regularly blow the place up anyway so we weren’t causing any bother to anyone. If a Mitsubishi Pajero has its 3.5litre V6 engine gunned in the sand dunes and no one (who finds it annoying) is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Yes it definitely does, and a darn good sound too! The ranger also told us about two unexploded 500pound bombs that are in some unknown location around where we were driving. I hoped not drive into either of them and to be a long way from one of the other drivers if they should somehow manage to detonate one, preferably the others should drive about five hundred metres, at least, ahead of the 4x4 I was in.

 (Unexploded ordnance and/or being hunted, this is proper countryside)

We drove around some small dunes and ponds for a while, which was darn good fun, and then headed over to the ‘hundred footer’ or if you prefer the metric system, like I do, the ‘thirty point four eight metre-er’. As you can probably guess this was a thirty metre high sand dune which was considerably higher than all the other dunes that we encountered on the trip. One by one we all descended the slope, as well as a dog who did it in a tenth the time it takes for a 4x4 to get down. This was more spectacular than it was fun, but it was still fun, driving around the smaller dunes was much more varied and faster moving, but at least I can say I’ve done the hundred footer now. 

(Looking down the 100ft'er)

We headed back to base then and everyone gave it some welly so we got back in no time. Time to wash all the sand of the 4x4's, re-inflate the tyres and have a barbecue before we all departed back to Auckland.

(Giving it some welly)

Getting back to Auckland I found the Mitsubishi to be comfortable, warm and it had automatic transmission so there was no clutch to do terrible whiplash inducing gear changes. How awful, this was very un-Land Rover like, I mean it could at least have given me reduced hearing for a week due to a noisy engine but it didn’t! It gave an altogether pleasant drive both on and off road which Landys just patently don’t offer and that's what makes Landys so great.

(The only tidal public highway I've ever been on)

(Definitely a road - speed limit sign on the beach)

Off roading was over for the day and what an awesome day, good enough on it's own to make me want to immigrate here! Now, off to the Christmas/birthday party I was invited to. Not to denigrate the birthday party bit, it was very enjoyable and full of great people, but yes it really was a Christmas party in July! Only in New Zealand, Merry Christmas everyone.