This past weekend we took an amazing trip to the Coromandel Peninsula, on the east coast of the North Island. My friends and I rented a 10-person van for the weekend and camped out by Hot Water Beach and in Coromandel Town (they're really creative with naming things here).
 |
| Our van in the gorgeous sunset |
We left in the late afternoon on Friday, so we didn't get there until about 9 or 10pm. We arrived at our campsite by Hot Water Beach and got out of the van to find out about the tsunami/earthquake disaster in Japan, and the warnings to stay off of NZ beaches. The footage was astounding; clips were being shown of the water coming up onto farmland and huge ships lying on their sides in the middle of the road. It's unbelievable that another earthquake occurred so soon after the Christchurch quake, and one that was so much stronger. The warnings for New Zealand were pretty worrying, but after some deliberation (and campsite employee reassurance) we decided to stay the night and see how the beaches were in the morning. The night was filled with moments of panic where I'd wake up to the sounds of surf and think that we would all be swept away by a giant wave, but we made it through the night.
 |
| Our route: through the center and then around the top of the peninsula |
On Saturday morning we went down to the beach and were surprised to find a good amount of people there (despite the "Beach Closed" sign) as well as quite a few brave surfers! Even though we had been looking forward to taking surfing lessons, we decided against it since the currents and tides were pretty unpredictable due to the tsunami. During low tide beachgoers can dig holes in the sand and sit in pools of hot water since there's a hot spot underneath, but the tide was too high for us to experiment with that so we hung out and played some volleyball instead.
 |
| Plenty of people at the beach despite this sign... |
 |
| Angela and Lydia admiring the surfers |
After the hot water beach we decided to move on to Cathedral Cove, where part of the Narnia movie "Prince Caspian" was filmed. We stayed there for a good while, did some exploring and played more volleyball. We wrapped up the day with fish 'n' chips in Whitianga, then camped out in Coromandel Town. It was really nice to get out of the city for a while, especially on a weekend as nice as this one was.
 |
| Everyone out on the rock at Cathedral Cove |
 |
| Rewarding ourselves with some fish 'n' chips |
 |
| Beautiful sunset view on the way to Coromandel Town |
It's surprising that I've been here for about two and a half months already, and this was my first real road trip (independently of the program) on the North Island. There are so many more places I want to go and somehow six months doesn't seem like enough time! Finally getting the ball rolling this weekend has made me really excited for more road trips though, and I'm sure we'll be doing a lot of them in the near future.
xx Tessa
No comments:
Post a Comment