Good Friday

We finally set off at about 9.30 after taking Totty to kennels.

We drove as far as Thames where we stopped for coffee before heading out to look across the estuary from the bird hide in the mangroves. When the tide is out you see the most birds and there were plenty out there but we have no idea what they were.

We carried on up the west side of the peninsular to Tapu where we went to Rapaura Water Gardens which were lovely, very peaceful and with lots of deep thoughts written on wooden plaques around the gardens! Through the gardens we walked along a track to the waterfalls known as "The Seven Stairs to Heaven" and very pretty they were, too.

The west side of the peninsular is supposed to be the less bendy road in fact, on the map, it "looks" straight. Wrong!! It is very bendy but very pretty and as it goes along the beach, for me at least, it was not too scary.

We arrived in Coromandel passing the many oyster beds out in the bay and it was much, much smaller than I had imagined. Coromandel has a ferry that comes over from Auckland and lots of people come from Auckland for holidays there.

We found a cafe for our lunch and Jon had the biggest club sandwich ever! We found our accommodation which was further out of the town than we thought but very pretty. Little cottages all in white and very colonial and very smart with a very helpful owner. She told us some of the walks to go on and so after dumping our bags we set off.

We drove down to the holiday park passing the wharf where the ferry comes in, soooo tiny. I'm not sure how big the ferry is! We parked the car and walked around the headland and through to Tucks Bay and then got lost a bit in the bush before making our way back to the car park, phew!

It was quite cold back in the cottage and we had to put the heating on! We had a well earned rest before going out to dinner which we had to drive into town, much to Jon's disgust he was not going to be able to have a drink! They are very keen on drink drivers here and it is just not worth having even one. We went to the Pepper Tree as not many places were open due to it being Good Friday and even then we had to pay 20% extra for bank holiday - ouch! That said we had a lovely meal ending up with Pavlova with roasted rhubarb and raspberry coulis yummy!

All the motels we have stayed in have electric blankets but so far we have had no need to use them - until tonight! It was very cold and getting into a toasty, warm bed was very nice!