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Glow little glow worm!

After a wonderfully restful sleep for both of us and a delicious healthy breakfast, we had a bit of a snoop around Taupo before setting out for Waitomo. We knew from the weather report last night that we couldn't really expect anything too nice today, so it wasn't too surprising that we encountered rain - sometimes fairly heavy - throughout the day.

Fortunately, we had only planned on diving into the caves at Waitomo to see the glow worm grotto. We really made excellent time getting there, so made a slight change in our accommodation plans and booked an extra night at Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula.

The caves were quite interesting and for Kathryn, who had never been in one before, it provided a gentle introduction to stalactites and stalagmites, as well as giving us both a peak at the 'glow-in-the-dark' world of glow worms. They aren't actually worms at all, but the larval stage of a small fungus-knat, which emits light to attract its food.

One really interesting part of the cave is the 'Cathedral'. The acoustics in this particular cave are world renowned. Acclaimed New Zealand Diva, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, has performed here.

Things improved weather-wise as we headed further north and east. We stopped close to Hamilton to stock up on breakfast and supper supplies for the next few days then headed to Thames. We were very pleasantly surprised to find that we had booked into a lovely little chalet with a fabulous view of the Firth of Thames and just across the road from a beach. The best news of all came from our hostess here. She said it should be 'perfect' tomorrow. From the weather report we saw this evening, it looks like we may now be in for that taste of summer we've been hoping for. However, just at the moment, rain is thundering off the metal roof of the chalet!

We will be happily ensconced here for three days before heading up to the Bay of Islands.

A Whole Lot of Sunday Driving

As promised, the day started with a mostly clear sky and the few clouds we did see during the day quickly moved on. We made a fairly early start, and drove to the east side of the peninsula because there is a rather special beach we wanted to check out. The drive across the peninsula was quite a bit more mountainous than we had expected, which meant the journey was a bit longer than we thought, but the countryside here is very green and picturesque. This really is a striking contrast to the drought-stricken areas we've come through.

Not too far past the small town of Whenuakite we turned down a side road to Hot Water Beach. Unfortunately we arrived just a bit too late in the day and the tide was too high for us to experience its special attraction. There is a small area of the beach, which is exposed at low tide, where you can scrape a hole in the sand and it will fill with geothermally heated water. You can then sit in your own private 'hot tub! If the water is too hot, you simply make a channel which will allow some cool sea water to enter.

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for larger picture of
Hot Water Beach on Coromandel Peninsula.

Despite the lack of hot water, we spread out on the beach and just soaked up the sun for a while. We had paddled in the sea while walking along the beach but it was far too cold to tempt either of us into swimming, although a number of hardy locals were swimming and surfing. Neither of us enjoys laying around on the beach for too long, so we soon moved on to explore more of the peninsula.

The next stop was Cathedral Cove which was just a few miles away. From the clifftop car park we had a superb view over the brilliant blue sea which is dotted with several small islands. Down below us was one of many sandy beaches in the area, and there were a number of small boats cruising around there. We were envious of the owners of the houses dotting the surrounding hills, as they all must have spectacular views.

We had read in our travel guide that Whitianga, near the north-east corner of Coromandel Peninsula, is the 'scallop capital of New Zealand', so we made that our stop for lunch. Although the better places in the town weren't open until supper, we did manage to find a beach-side restaurant so Tom could enjoy a small feed of scallops.

The road around the peninsula becomes much more interesting from this point onward, with gravel and paved stretches sprinkled in quite unusual amounts along a winding, twisting, up and down road into Coromandel. The town is an attractive and charming former gold-mining and timber town surrounded by magnificent views of Coromandel Harbour and the Hauraki Gulf.

The majority of the drive back to Thames took us along an extremely impressive coast road. The views across the Hauraki Gulf gradually gave way to the Firth of Thames along this winding stretch of highway.

This evening we had arranged to meet up with our friends, Jane and Jo, for a sort of farewell meal. We met them in Thames and found a nice little spot for some noshing and laughs. Tom even managed to fit in another feed of scallops!

Tomorrow we are going to explore this area a bit more...hopefully visiting 'Wilderness Gems', which sounds quite intriguing. More on that later! Of course, we are also hoping for a bit more sun with our fun!

Rocks and Flocks!

We decided to take it nice and easy today, so took our time getting going, then headed into Thames for our caffeine fix.

After checking out the local bird hide and discovering that the best action wasn't due until after lunch, we set off to check out Wilderness Gems! It turned out to be a vast warehouse of all sorts of rocks, gems, geodes and more. Although some bits were tempting to Kathryn, she realised that they would just be added weight to the luggage. Besides, nothing really jumped out to say 'Buy Me', anyway.

There was an interesting little closet which housed a display of fluorescent rocks. It had an intimate viewing area, with just two chairs provided! We were actually treated to a short light show with commentary, in addition to viewing the glow-in-the-dark rocks.

After picking up some sandwiches for lunch, we drove on to Miranda on the west side of the Firth of Thames directly opposite Thames, which has a shorebird centre. There is a protected area with a hide close by, so we had some great views of herons, wrybills, oystercatchers, stilts, the New Zealand dotterel, bar-tailed godwits, red knots, skylarks and goldfinches.

Just sitting, watching and listening to the birds provided us with a very relaxing way to pass an afternoon. It also meant much less driving for us...we'll have plenty of that to do tomorrow when we move on to Paihia in the Bay of Islands.

We have been travelling with a book on the Birds of New Zealand and have now managed to identify over 80 different species. Even with some being a bit doubtful, we feel sure of some 75!!

We have been keeping a log of the number of kilometres we've travelled each day, and the total is now over 6300. Tomorrow we will have driven over 4000 miles! This sounds like an awful lot, and there have been a few days when we've spent a lot of time in the car. But overall, we have tended to make a lot of stops to break up our journeys, both for quick photo stops as well as some longer strolls. Consequently, although we feel that we've been able to cover a lot of ground since we've been here, our holiday doesn't seem to have been dominated by driving.

Tomorrow

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