7th - 12th Feb - Bay of Islands and The Coromandel
The second big exploration of the North Island was with four up in Little Tinker - with the oldies in the back!
We headed up north to the Bay of Islands through the glorious rain and cloud of the New Zealand summer!! When we arrived James questioned whether his 7 hours driving had been worthwhile - but I did ask him where he'd rather be! He agreed Brent Cross or the Northern Line on a sweaty Monday night was definitely not preferable!!
The area was beautiful and the clouds soon parted - although we did keep our wetware handy just in case! Our first full day there was spent on fantastic cruise all around the islands. We saw many idyllic bays, some of which had been bagged by the rich and famous to create their own James Bond style pads - complete with helicopter pads and hangers, golf cart tunnels trough mountains and rotating jetties. Not that we were jealous - good luck to them - sure they're not really happy!!!
The best bit was the unexpected arrival of a pod of dolphins who chiose to entertain us for a while with their synchro swimming and acrobatics. we tried to get pictures but usually ended up with rippling water or the edge of the boat!
The next couple of days we lounged around in the sun - working on the tan! We got the chance tot play with our new snorkel gear in what appeared to be a stunning place for a first dip. However, within a minute of a first head under experience we were clambering back onto the rocks with pooh in our swimmers! No we weren't swimming in a sewer outlet - we had just realised that the moving sand two feet beneath us was in fact a massive sting ray (at least 50 feet in diameter - and that was just one of it's eyeballs!) Think it's the fastest swim we've ever done but I got to the rocks first after pushing James out the way!
The next day, in an attempt to recover from our shock we went snorkling a marine reserve at Goat Island. Here we fortunatley saw things we wanted to see at close encounters including big fat snappers, bright blue things and lots of brown striped bottom feeders (this time we were lucky not to be providing food for them!).
After the Bay of Islands we headed down to the Coromandel Peninsula. We had a spectacular drive along the Pacific Coast Highway while the sun was setting. We arrived at our destination - Carrie and Martin's bach (trns: holiday home) sitting on the sea front in a weeny hamlet called Kuaotunu. We stayed here for 2 nights where Erika and Clayton came to meet us for Clayton's birthday celebrations. It was an amazing place to stay - right on the beach which was lush for swimming and wave jumping. Baby cotterills were scampering across the beach - I tried to get pics but again like my dolphin attempts I got more landscape than anything else!
We feasted on all sorts of fresh seafood, swam and generally chilled out. It was wonderful!
We headed up north to the Bay of Islands through the glorious rain and cloud of the New Zealand summer!! When we arrived James questioned whether his 7 hours driving had been worthwhile - but I did ask him where he'd rather be! He agreed Brent Cross or the Northern Line on a sweaty Monday night was definitely not preferable!!
The area was beautiful and the clouds soon parted - although we did keep our wetware handy just in case! Our first full day there was spent on fantastic cruise all around the islands. We saw many idyllic bays, some of which had been bagged by the rich and famous to create their own James Bond style pads - complete with helicopter pads and hangers, golf cart tunnels trough mountains and rotating jetties. Not that we were jealous - good luck to them - sure they're not really happy!!!
The best bit was the unexpected arrival of a pod of dolphins who chiose to entertain us for a while with their synchro swimming and acrobatics. we tried to get pictures but usually ended up with rippling water or the edge of the boat!
The next couple of days we lounged around in the sun - working on the tan! We got the chance tot play with our new snorkel gear in what appeared to be a stunning place for a first dip. However, within a minute of a first head under experience we were clambering back onto the rocks with pooh in our swimmers! No we weren't swimming in a sewer outlet - we had just realised that the moving sand two feet beneath us was in fact a massive sting ray (at least 50 feet in diameter - and that was just one of it's eyeballs!) Think it's the fastest swim we've ever done but I got to the rocks first after pushing James out the way!
The next day, in an attempt to recover from our shock we went snorkling a marine reserve at Goat Island. Here we fortunatley saw things we wanted to see at close encounters including big fat snappers, bright blue things and lots of brown striped bottom feeders (this time we were lucky not to be providing food for them!).
After the Bay of Islands we headed down to the Coromandel Peninsula. We had a spectacular drive along the Pacific Coast Highway while the sun was setting. We arrived at our destination - Carrie and Martin's bach (trns: holiday home) sitting on the sea front in a weeny hamlet called Kuaotunu. We stayed here for 2 nights where Erika and Clayton came to meet us for Clayton's birthday celebrations. It was an amazing place to stay - right on the beach which was lush for swimming and wave jumping. Baby cotterills were scampering across the beach - I tried to get pics but again like my dolphin attempts I got more landscape than anything else!
We feasted on all sorts of fresh seafood, swam and generally chilled out. It was wonderful!
posted by Polly and James at Sunday, February 20, 2005
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