The good, the bad, and the ugly: Coromandel and the Bay of Plenty

When my great-grandmother was born, at the end of the nineteenth century, only one country recognized women’s right to vote: New Zealand. The country has been going its own way ever since. Just a few years ago there was an election here and, no matter whom you voted for, the prime minister was guaranteed to be a woman. Imagine an election where being a woman was not even an issue.

There are a lot of good things about New Zealand. The weather, during our time here, has not been one of them. I’m not going to say that this is the longest stretch of bad weather I’ve ever been in, because I remember a month in Oxford when the cloud settled over the valley like a smothering blanket. Nonetheless, we’ve had rain more than we have clear skies, both day and night.

Our destination on the first day of our camping trip was Hot Water Beach. This name is somewhat misleading. You’re supposed to dig a personal spa pool, and then hot water bubbles up from the volcanic earth. We saw lots of pictures of people basking in these shallow hot pools. There were even warning signs about how dangerously hot the water could be. 

Armed with our rented shovels, or spades as they call them, we headed for where the map said the hot water was. Not where everyone else was digging—they reported tepid water. But the sun was out, and we enjoyed digging a very deep hole.

Photo courtesy of T.

We found, however, no water at all. Then we dug where everybody else was digging, and finally some water came in, but it was cold water from the sea. We were about to give up when some German young people (“kids” as they are to us) told us the hot water was in the sea!

So we waded into the Pacific and danced around for a while, getting our toes hot. It was fun, just not as advertised. That, in fact, would be a good slogan for our entire time in New Zealand.

Hot Water Beach

The Auckland Airbnb I mentioned in my last post was the coldest place I’ve been. I think that says a lot, considering we’ve been in a camper van ever since. (There was also the small matter of the guest bathroom being off the family kitchen, but never mind.) But now we were hardy campers, prepared for whatever we would encounter. We started with a lovely, winding, up and down drive across the Coromandel Peninsula, which is how we arrived at Hot Water Beach and camped at its “holiday park.”

We should have known en route that we were going to have to work for our fun in New Zealand. We stopped at a scenic lookout (one of many in the Coromandel Forest Park), but the view was not from the parking area. There was a walk up to it, a short but rather steep “track.” It was worth it though.

Despite the clouds, we were discovering another good thing about New Zealand: It’s beautiful. Around every bend. People kept telling me the South Island is more beautiful and if that’s true, I don’t know how I could ever endure traveling there. Here on the North Island we literally pulled over at a gas station to take pictures of the view from it.

The evening was cool and rainy. I could write that about many evenings in a row, but the new day was so much better. We actually got warmth and sunshine at Hot Water Beach. And by the afternoon, we were headed for Hahei Beach and a long, and fairly vigorous, hike to Cathedral Cove.

There was a nice variety of beach views on the way, and a couple detours to coves where you’d really have to snorkel to enjoy.

There’s also a World War I memorial forest en route. 

Cathedral Cove is only accessible down steps from the track, or by boat. It’s the highlight of this area and I could see why.

Te Hoho Rock, Cathedral Cove

I remember the verse to “Oh, Susanna” that went “It rained all night the day I left.” That’s what it felt like. It didn’t help that at this campground, ironically part of the “Top 10” chain, we were as far from the bathrooms (in pouring down rain) as it is possible to be. I’m sure camping under these trees is lovely on a dry night. T. made a dent in how miserable it all was by frying bacon and eggs in the morning. Anyone who grew up in England, Wales, Cornwall, or probably elsewhere in those islands has tales of camping in bad weather. Shivering in the rain in a caravan park is a rite of passage for British people, just as traveling and working overseas is for Kiwis.

We meant to make our way down the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, but somehow I missed a crucial turn (evidently this happens a lot). Suddenly we looked up at a junction and I realized we were not on the road I had thought, but instead were headed for a farmer’s field. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise though, as the road across to Waihi took us through the spectacular Karangahake Gorge.

We stopped, in the ongoing rain, for a snack and hot drink at Waikino Cafe. Waikino is where the Goldfields Railway runs to Waihi. We weren’t going to wait an hour and a half for the train, but the cafe was lovely.

Waikino Station Cafe also had a roaring fire inside.

Via an information sign there, I also discovered that just down the road was a walk to a grove of kauris, the great ancient trees that once covered much of the North Island. We drove down there and saw a bunch of high school kids emerging in rain gear. Their guides told us they’d been “tramping” for seventeen days!

I don’t know why but every English-speaking country has its own word for what I would call hiking. Trekking, hillwalking, bushwalking, or here in New Zealand, tramping. One of the tramping boys warned us “There’s a river,” and we smiled and waved as we headed down the track. Well, there was a river all right. The track continues on the other side, to the kauri grove. On a good day we might have crossed it via stepping stones, but it was all overflowing today.

No wonder the kids were soaked. They must have been so wet already, after seventeen days, that fording the stream was like nothing to them. 

There is a surprising number of one-lane bridges on the North Island. They are marked with priority arrows, so you know whether you or the other driver has right of way. They should try that in some other places. Other features I noticed on the way were tours of a kiwi fruit farm, an establishment called The Convenient Cow, and “Rifle Range Road—No Exit,” which sounded rather ominous.

We were to learn more about rifles, kiwi fruit, and a whole lot more at our next stop, Tauranga. We were headed there because a girl T. knew from the neighborhood growing up got in touch on one of those Internet groups and said, “If you’re ever in New Zealand…” Don’t say this to us because we will take you up on it. The next thing you know, we were seated around Katherine and Peter’s dinner table, learning that we’d never eaten a ripe kiwi fruit in our lives.

It’s true. Kiwi fruit is not supposed to be green inside. It goes red, and the only reason it’s green overseas is because they spray it with nitrogen to keep it perpetually green, on its long journey from NZ. Kind of like a green banana. Not that there’s anything wrong with green bananas but what if you’d never even known what they could taste like ripe?

Peter, whom neither of us had ever met before that evening, also cooked us breakfast in the morning. Oh, and they lent us a car. They may be “Pomkis” (half Pom, half Kiwi) but Katherine and Peter admirably carry on the hospitality we’ve encountered everywhere in New Zealand. It reminded me of the anecdote in Georgia Beers’s novel, 96 Hours, about passengers on U.S. planes who were stranded in Newfoundland in the days after September 11. One host family lends the main characters a car. “What is wrong with them?” one asks the other.

“They’re Canadian,” she says. 

The maple leaf flying in Tairua

We were staying five minutes away from our friends, at a campground that is also Fernland Spa. This meant free admission to the hot pool, fed by mineral springs. Much of NZ is bubbling away volcanically, and people here make the most of it by putting thermal pools everywhere, including at campgrounds. So we had a hot soak when we got there. A way to enjoy the outdoors on a rainy day.

Photo courtesy of T.

Our New Zealand friends also introduced us to local brews, Mermaid’s Mirth and Blowhole. So the next day we were feeling ready to tackle a day trip through the Kaimai-Mamaku Forest Park and over to Matamata.

Matamata

Matamata was just a normal little New Zealand town until its residents were extras in The Hobbit movies. Through some deal that didn’t apply to The Lord of the Rings, they were able to preserve their Hobbit holes and various film set things, which now offers tours as Hobbiton. Now, I’ve been to the Harry Potter film tour twice, and never seen any of the films (the books are another matter). So we drew the line at Hobbiton, but did enjoy a break at the appropriately named Shire’s Rest.

We then stopped for a picnic lunch at Firth Tower. This tower was built back in the day as some kind of status symbol for its wealthy out-of-town owner; today it’s a museum. Its parking lot is also an example of one of the many bargain campsites scattered around New Zealand—provided you don’t want any facilities, such as showers. Good practice for America, I guess.

The weather was only somewhat cloudy that day, so we tramped through woods up to the lookout at Wairere Falls. 

These are the highest falls on the North Island, and I was glad to get a chance to hike properly, after the aborted attempt the day before. By the time we got back to Fernland Spa, we were ready for another hot soak. The weather even stayed dry long enough for me to sit out at the picnic table and write; most outdoor furniture has been too wet to use.

I drove the camper van over to Katherine’s the next morning, while T. drove the borrowed car. We returned that and said our goodbyes, and Kath sent us on our way with a big bag of feijoas, a fruit I’d never before heard of, let alone tried. They are absolutely delicious, and I’m already sad that I’ll never get them anywhere else (unless possibly in the sorry state of an exported kiwi fruit).

Still life with kiwi fruit and feijoa

So, New Zealand is good, apart from the bad weather. And the ugly? Apart from a few logging spots, I haven’t seen anything ugly. I don't know how sustainable the logging industry is, but we did see a whole crop of new little trees planted near some old ones, waiting their turn.

The cat that hangs around our Tauranga campground

I don’t want to end on an ugly note, so let me mention the domestic animals that periodically brighten our stay in various places. Cats, of course, are a real problem in Australia when they go feral and prey on native mammals. But at the Katherine campground we met a lovely Jack Russell whose name, I could see from his tag, was Bob. The reason we never provided a picture of Bob is that he was camera shy. He kept hanging around us at the bar, yet every time one of us made a move, off he went. Sometimes you just have to enjoy the moment.