KEEP LEFT! (Mar 13 - 15)

During a rainy and bleek day of blogging and music, Berni and I met a girl named Rebecca who was originally from Alberta. We all decided to rent a car the next day and head out to some sites before leaving Whitianga. The only problem was none of us had ever driven on the left side of the road before, so it was going to be an interesting adventure. The cost to rent the car was $65 for the day + fill up the tank before returning it, so it came out to about $33 each (not baddddddd).

The company sent a van to pick us up at 9am to get the car (even though the place was like 2 blocks down the road..weird) and after a run down of the current dings in the car and payment I was volunteered to drive...wooo. It wasn't so bad though, you learn pretty quickly if you don't want to crash, and we were in a small town and in the country side so people were too concerned with how slow I was going and how I kept veering to the middle of the road (not my fault though, the wheel was unaligned!).

Our first stop in the morning was at New Chums Beach, which is in Whangapoua (near where we got picked up), which is voted one of the finest beaches in the world. And it better be considering what you have to do to get there. First you arrive at a bay and walk along to the rocks on the other side, then you head up into the forest along a slim path (about a foot to a foot and a half wide) which gets progressively higher. As you are looking over the edge to the rocks below (not too high, about a 3m drop onto some rocks) you also have to climb over protruding tree limbs and roots and navigate a windey and undulating path. This, as you can imagine, makes the beach much more secluded. There aren't even any signs posted as to where to go or that there is even a beach on the other side of the initial bay; luckily Rebecca was there before so she knew the route well. I felt like I was in the movie the Beach discovering some lost beach paradise in the middle of no where. You come out onto the beach and there are beautiful cliff faces behind you and a few dotted islands in the bright blue water.

We spent the entire morning there without anyone else showing up, others started to arrive around midday but even then it was only a hand full of people. I spent some time sitting in a tree, laying on the beach listening to music, and swimming. Wonderful morning to say the least. When we were all relaxed out we headed back to the car (by the time the bay partially filled with water..making it even harder to get to the beach) and set off for lunch and then our next destination; Cathedral Cove. It had just recently re-opened because of some mud slides in the area so we were lucky to get to see it. The view from the beginning of the cove walk was very nice, again multiple islands in the water and a wide view of the sea. The cove and surrounding beach were quite impressive (see pics for wowness), interesting rock formations sitting right on the shore, I think it was all lime stone, and a fresh water water fall just doing it's thing on the beach, ready to shower those coming from the salty sea water. We stayed there for a while, even though it was getting a bit dark, to enjoy the view and atmosphere.

I picked up two hitchhikers that I saw at Cathedral Cove on the way to our next destination (German and French), the FAMOUS Hot Water Beach. Now....I'm no hater or anything, but this place really didn't do it for me. Maybe it was the fact that we went for the evening low tide, you have to go at low tide for the full effect, so the place was full of people (it only works in a very small area). I just wasn't too impressed with the whole thing, it was cool but maybe a bit over hyped. It's basically just a bunch of people digging holes in the sand and sitting in them. The idea is cool, how the water is heated from the hot springs and what not but it's a bit touristy I guess. The best part was actually building the pool, because you have to make a sand wall to stop the water from the sea coming in. And you just kind of team up with random people and make big pools of hot water (some places in the pool are hot and others not so much). Some of the areas had water that was REALLY hot though, but they were too close to the water to get a good pool going. After a while I kind of wandered off to look at the stars on the beach which was really nice.

We stayed for a few hours then on our way back we realized that everything in Whitianga closes early so we missed out on dinner and decided to get some meat pies and noodles. Then I dropped off the two hitchhikers and it was off to bed. Before going to bed though, I met these two guys from Nova Scotia who had just sailed for a few days from Auckland to Whitianga.. it sounded like a sweet idea, so after some information gathering I agreed that that would be a nice trip.

(Rebecca sidenotes: Rebacca was awesome, she works in Antarctica during the summers in random places (bars/serving food/etc) and could scale rocks like a goat. She was also extremely nice and just all around cool peoples)

The next day was an unplanned extension so it consisted of laundry, calling les parents, and a Ferry ride to Front Bay (just across the harbour) with Berni and a guy I met that day named Emel from Denmark. Berni and another girl she had met named Christiana gathered the information and set up the sailing trip, departing the next day, and it was set. That's the coolest thing about traveling and living in hostels, sometimes really cool opportunities just come up because you're awake at the right time and willing to start up conversations with people.

That night Berni, Emel and I had a nice dinner of shrimp (coconut cream + pinnapple) and rice with white win (from Napier) as a send off to the very classy Coromandel Peninsula. Setting sail in the morning at 8:30am.

Peace & Love