We drove to Waitomo where we had booked to do a Black Water Rafting trip with ‘The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co.’ After kitting up in some uncomfortable and soggy wetsuits, we took a minibus to the Ruakuri cave where we descended via the ‘wet entrance’. It was quite good fun, although I think a little bit less adventurous than Pete was hoping for! We jumped off quite a few waterfalls underground and cruised along the underwater passages on our tubes (big rubber rings) viewing the glow worms which live up on the roofs of the passages. After the trip we had a much needed hot shower and soup and bagels! It was quite good fun, although rather pricey, considering we can cave for free at home!
After Waitomo we continued the drive north to the Coromandel peninsula. It was, unfortunately, still raining, so we didn’t do much else that day. We continued to head north via some mining towns, one, Waihi, we stopped in briefly to see the huge big hole in the ground where they still mine for gold today. We stopped at a beach north of Whangamata, called Opoutere, which the Lonely Planet had described to us as a ‘hidden gem’, and they were right! It was a gorgeous long expanse of deserted white beach, and thankfully the weather decided to cheer up a bit so we wandered along there for a while and had a paddle.
We continued on to the Broken Hills DOC campsite where we did a walk the next day that took us through an old 500m mine shaft. That was pretty cool, and there were more glow worms - I’d recommend doing this walk if you don’t want to go in a wet cave and pay $110! However, it was very uphill, and we were both exhausted at the end!
From there we carried on up the peninsula to Hot Water Beach, which we’d heard quite a lot about from various people. It’s like the other hot springs we’ve come across, but the water comes up through the springs onto the beach and you can dig yourself a pool that fills up with hot water.
We arrived at about midday with just enough time to have a dip in the springs before high tide came up. I think it was quite a good time to go really, as just after we arrived a lot of people left because one part of the spring got caught by an incoming wave that filled all the hot pools up with cold seawater! We ended up with a nice spring pool that someone else had dug out of the sand earlier in the day - they had also constructed quite a substantial sand wall in defence against the tide, and as we were also behind other pre-dug pools we were able to stay there (and stay warm!) for quite a while, though Pete did enjoy building sand walls anyway!
We just had time to stop off at Cathedral Cove before it got dark. The walk along the coast and round the other bays is nice, although we both thought that Cathedral Cove itself was a little overrated, its not as impressive as some of the other sea arches we’ve seen elsewhere.
We stayed at the Broken Hills campsite again, and it rained heavily all night :( We decided not to go up to the top of the Coromandel but instead to head over to the Northlands. We spent most of that day driving (up through Auckland on the motorway was a bit of a shock to the system after all the windy one lane roads I was used to!) We drove to a town called Whangarei where we visited the iSite to see what there was to do in the area. We heard that the diving off the coast was supposed to be fantastic, so booked to do a dive off the Tutukaka coast at the Poor Knights Islands (reputedly some of the best sub-tropical diving in the world).
The next morning we were up bright and early to go diving. The company we went with (Dive! Tutukaka) were very professional and friendly. It was quite a luxury as while we were out there the crew set up all our kit for us so all we had to do was put it on, we weren’t used to that from Fiji where we had to set our kit up ourselves before every dive!
We left at about 8.30 and did 2 dives, both based around Calypso Bay to the South of the islands. The first dive we did was at the ‘Magic Wall’ where we saw lots of fish (can’t remember the names of them!). We had some lunch, then our second dive was at ‘Blue Mao Mao Arch’ (see map), and this was my favourite one! We swam through an underwater passage to where there was a feeding ground underneath an arch that could be seen from above water. I’ve never seen so many fish in one place, it was incredible! There were literally thousands feeding there, its was a fantastic experience - we hired an underwater camera so we’ve got some photos too.
The next day we continued our drive north to the Bay of Islands, stopping in Paihia to book some activities. Thankfully the weather had finally changed and was lovely and sunny! We wanted to do a dolphin swimming trip and the man in the iSite booked us on one for that afternoon, and we arranged to be picked up in Russell (a 10 minute ferry ride across the bay) so we jumped on the ferry to have a look around. Russell is quite a sweet little town, although we didn’t spend too much time there.
The dolphin trip was okay, we found a pod of dolphins quite quickly and got some more good photos, but we weren’t able to swim with them as they had young. After that though, the boat continued on to do a sightseeing tour of the islands round the area, which wasn’t what we were expecting. We’d wanted to go on a swimming trip, but it seemed that we’d been booked onto a winter combined trip where if you’re able to swim with the dolphins you can but you also do sightseeing etc. They have a guarantee that you’ll see the dolphins (otherwise you can go again for free) but it seemed to us that once we’d seen some they didn’t bother looking for any more - it was almost as if they’d ticked that box and didn’t need to worry about it again! If anyone reading this is wanting to swim with dolphins in the Bay of Islands area, make sure you book on the trip you want! The iSite were helpful booking us on but clearly didn’t understand what it was we were after. But never mind! After that we popped in to a pub/restaurant we had passed that had a band playing some good music, so that was a nice way to chill out for the evening.
The next day we went to visit the Waitangi Treaty grounds near Paihia. It was quite interesting if you’re after a bit of culture, although we found it to be very pricey and perhaps not worth what we paid. ($25 entry each). Unfortunately, while we had been hoping to get a sea kayak around the bay for the afternoon, the weather had begun to turn cloudy and windy again so we decided not to - we figured we could do that elsewhere (in the sunshine in Oz probably!).
We spent the next day driving down back towards Auckland. We stopped at a nice big DOC site off the main highway, but still right by the beach! This was totally different to other DOC sites, much bigger and manned in an office the whole time (also cheaper than some we had stayed in, at $7 with drinking water and facilities compared to $9 in Queenstown and the Coromandel for pit toilets and stream water!!)
It had turned sunny again (!) so we had a look at the beach and then sat and chilled out in the sun and read our books for the afternoon. We’ve decided we need to learn how to chill out and not do anything, as we seem to have spent lots of money on activities while we’ve been here!
This morning we had a lie in and enjoyed out last morning with Steve, helped to tow a couple in a bigger camper who parked in the sand and got stuck (!) and then drove down towards Auckland to give Steve back :(. We are now in a nice little hostel near to the airport, and will be getting our plane to Sydney at 8.30 tomorrow morning!
