Wot no Internet?

Thursday 19 March Mainly warm and sunny 23C Drove 80km

One piece of news that we did have last night was that the 'free internet' at 'Eleanor's Place' wasn't going to happen. We had asked the lady of the house, but she told us to ask her husband on his return from work. He didn't really seem to know a whole lot about it, but did say that if we plugged into the phone socket, we could use 'dial-up', but to let them know before we did. Not a good answer. Out notepad has no modem, and dial-up wouldn't support any of the things we wished to access anyway.

So this morning back to the Tourist Information office, to see if they could sort things out. Luckily, they refunded the rest of our money and got us moved into an apartment in the Marina Park Appartments. More expensive than we planned, but a great apartment and wifi internet access (albeit costing $NZ10 per hour). Not only that, but it also had free laundry facilities in the apartment, after we had just paid elsewhere!

We rapidly moved in to the new apartment and headed into town and booked a trip with Sea Cave Adventures for the afternoon. An enquiry was also made about doing some diving on Sunday at Dive HQ a local dive shop.

Following lunch in town, we met Dan down at the quay and climbed on board his boat, We crossed the harbour and picked up three more people before we headed up the coast. The trip took us out past Front and Lonely beaches and the imposing Shakespear Cliffs; the cliffs named by Lt James Cook on his visit to the area in the 1760's. A marine reserve has been set up here on the coast and has improved fish stocks hugely. The next bay was Cook's Bay followed by the wonderful Cathedral Cove, Stingray Bay and Gemstone Bay. Once at Hahei Bay we headed out to the islands and explored several fascinating sea caves where the roof had collapsed leaving a hole open to the sky.

Once back in Whitianga, we set out in the car to explore the gravelled road to Coromandel, the SH 309. This road is 22km long and gravel almost all the way, but it goes through beautiful mountains. Once over the Waia pass, there is a walk to a Kauri grove. The ten minute walk is well worth the effort as the sight of the huge trees is fantastic, they dwarf everything around them. It is a miracle that this grove of trees survived the log-cutters of the 19th century. Unusally, just a short distance from the grove, there is a 'Siamese' Kauri. Two trees that grew close together and as they got bigger, effectively combined at the base whilst producing two trunks.

Coromandel town is quite scenic, but we didn't stop. We took the other 'main' road back to Whitianga which is 44km long as opposed to the 22km gravel road. It is probably even more winding than the gravel road, but has good view from the summit.