Saturday, March 30 - Whangerei ...

     ... or fahn-gur-eye, as the Kiwis pronounce it, is the biggest town north of Auckland, and has a few things to interest even the jaded traveler looking forward to being home.

We walked through a nice conservatory with a variety of rooms, including
a fernery, which isn't too hard to stuff full of native ferns, since NZ is
probably the ferniest country in the world.  This, of course, is an orchid.

Outside of the library are a line of pou, which are
Maori totem poles.  These have been carved by a
variety of artists to reflect the multiethnic origins
of the people of NZ.  This shows an Albanian man
with his feet in his new country, longing for his woman
 still at home, hence upside down on the other
side of the world.

This is a contribution by the Korean community

This Maori carving represents something profound,
but I can't remember what it is

Nearby, this sculpture promotes the theater 

Next we visited an old quarry that has been converted into public gardens.
Various old concrete structures, terraces cut into the hillside, and a lake at
the bottom of the quarry are incorporated into the landscape.  

One terrace is home to an arid garden with cacti, acacias, and other deserty
plants

The gardens are rather new, but with the extremely favorable NZ climate, it's
already an impressive place.  It will become spectacular in the decades ahead.

From there we inspected the Abbey Caves.  They're on private land, but
there is no admittance fee.  In fact,  it's all rather wild and undeveloped,
which we like. 

The caves are rather hard to climb down into, and have water flowing
through them.  We satisfied ourselves with a cursory look.  These
small stalactites were sorta cool.

The area around the caves was in woods, and after checking out the caverns
we explored the Stone Forest

Moss-covered limestone monoliths and rocks littered
the space at the top of the hill

The mix of trees and greenish rocks in the dim light of the woods was
weird enough ...

... with a maze of routes we were careful not to get lost ...

... then it got a little creepy when we stumbled on this solitary grave protected
by an old picket fence.  Poor Louis lived less than two years before dying
in 1888.  We wondered who is still leaving toys for the little boy.

It's enough to give me bad dreams

         Hope all your dreams are sweet and interesting.  Good night ...

Friday, March 29 - Kiwis and Oystercatchers head to the coast

      Imagine Easter and Labor Day both falling on the same four day weekend, with fall and winter soon to follow.  Then, add a populace that loves to be outdoors, whether camping, tramping, fishing, kayaking, or just messing around in boats.  Finally, picture only a few roads out of the largest city in the country, all headed towards idyllic coasts and forests.  That's New Zealand this weekend.  We began to see the exodus after dark on Thursday while we were eating mussels along the main road into Coromandel.  It was a nearly non-stop stream of traffic, every fourth or fifth towing a boat on a trailer or carrying kayaks on the roof.
     Then, Friday morning, as we headed out of the peninsula we were confronted by a continuous stream of traffic on the narrow, winding roads along the coast, fortunately almost all of it headed in the opposite direction.  It was hard to imagine that that many people even lived in the country!

A last look at the Coromandel Peninsula coastline

Every parking lot near a boat ramp was crowded with vehicles attached
to empty boat trailers ...

... and every bache, motel, B&B, and holiday park occupied.  We'd not seen
such crowds of native travelers anywhere in our seven months away from
home, and when the weekend is over that will probably be it.

We stopped at a beach along the way and saw large flocks of Pied
Oystercatchers ...

... which isn't too surprising since this is one of the world's great shellfish
growing areas.

     As we drove north through greater Auckland the traffic coming out of the city had reached a standstill, always such a jolly way to start a vacation.  And we started seeing clouds, which turned to rain once we were north of the city.  We stopped for a few groceries in a small town north of Auckland, then checked into a rather decrepit campground where we were charged $40 to spend the night, the most we've paid in NZ.  Oh well, we had a place to stay, which after looking earlier into a completely full large public campground, seemed a relief.  That, and finally being off the busy roads.  To tell you the truth, if we'd known this weekend would see such a deluge of Kiwis hitting the road, we probably would have planned to come home sooner.  Oh well, it's only two weeks until we leave.

Thursday, March 28 - Kayaking in Coromandel

Wednesday afternoon we crossed the peninsula and saw Coromandel
Harbor from an overlook, and were immediately fascinated by the view
of islands and bays and coves. We decided that if we could rent a kayak
without a guide, we would explore the area the next day.  So Thursday
we drove to the only place in town renting kayaks, and got one for the day.

Green-lipped mussels are grown in extensive farms in the areas.  Here a barge
is pulling up a long rope on which the mussels have been 'seeded'.  It takes
about two years for the mollusks to reach harvestable size.

We kayak onto a beach for lunch.

There are many little unpopulated coves.  And as opposed to Abel Tasman
where there were dozens of kayakers out for the day, except for some sailboats
and mussel farmers, we were the only ones on the water.

We poked around the coast, exploring this cave and
checking out other interesting areas

Although he's difficult to spot in this photo, a little Blue Penguin was fishing
near us at one point

Late in the afternoon sailboats began to set anchor in the coves for the night.
We took a little break on this beach to stretch our legs and backs.  We had
a lot smoother conditions than at Abel Tasman.

We finished up kayaking near sunset at a little harbor where we'd been
dropped off eight hours earlier.  

After seeing the mussel farms and talking to the locals about how wonderful
the bivalves were, we knew we'd have to eat some for dinner.  We went to
the Mussel Kitchen, reputedly the best place to try them.  I had a dozen, grilled
with four different toppings.  This type of mussel is one of the largest in
the world, and twelve filled me up.  Pretty tasty too, although I suspect
more because of the added ingredients than because of the shellfish itself.

Diana had the Boiled Pot.  Too bad they didn't just do it the French, or
Jayne way.  These were nearly ruined by cooking them with bacon.  What
a shame. As you can see however, they are really big, and there were at least twenty in the pot.

Wednesday, March 27 - Cathedral Cove, Hot Water Beach

The Coromandel Peninsula is east of Auckland and has a number of
well known attractions.  Since it's only a couple hours away from NZ's
biggest city, there are plenty of Kiwi vacationers enjoying the beginning
of Autumn.

The coastline has caves, solitary rocks, and islands

Cathedral Cove joins two small surf beaches, and indeed has a
cathedral-like feel to it

A smaller cave, more like a chapel I suppose

A view of the Sentinel

A bit down the coast, hot water bubbles up right at the edge of the surf.
During low tide you can dig down a foot or so and make your own hot tub.
That area just left of Diana's legs was quite hot!  Within fifteen minutes of
taking this photo the incoming tide began flooding the whole area.  Lots
of fun.

The area that covered by the hot springs isn't very large, but as Diana said
it still wasn't as crowded as Bondi Beach just outside of Sydney, which
must have nearly 200 acres of sand mobbed with people.

Tuesday, March 26 - Gold in New Zealand

    If there is gold to be found, people will flock to it and move heaven and earth to find it.  NZ has several old and new gold mining towns.  We visited one still operating, then one where 2000 people once lived but has now been taken over by the forest.

Silver and gold have been pounded out of the quartz from this open mine
in Waihi for several decades.

Those teeny tiny trucks continuously roll up and down the ramps, bringing
fresh rock to the rolling mill at the top.

OK, so they're not so tiny.

This cool castle-like building used to house giant steam water pumps to keep
the underground mines clear before the open pit was dug in the 1950's.

Down the road 15 km in the Karangahake Gorge miners built a huge complex
of buildings that practically filled the canyon.  Mining stopped in the 1930's
and now, nearly all trace of the machiinery and buildings is gone.

Tramway tracks still remain, and in fact have been kept clear so tourists can
check out the ruins.  As is typical for New Zealand, there aren't a bunch of
safety barriers or warnings to protect you from your own stupidity. 

We found this old photo of one of the miners.  He looked amazingly familiar.

We got to tramp through tunnels and mines, using our headlamps.

With very little level land inside the gorge much of the infrastructure
is underground

This huge chamber was dug out to house the water pumps.  It was pitch black
in there.  Fortunately, the flash on our camera was bright enough to make out
some of the detail.

The old tramline carved into the gorge wall, with a little cable bridge
to get to the other side.

Monday, March 25 - Mt. Maunganui

We hiked up Mt. Manganui, a hill overlooking the Miami Beach of the
east coast.  The sandy beach reaches the horizon in both directions.

After getting all hot and sweaty we went bogey boarding in the surf.
I wish Diana could get into it a little bit more.

Self portrait with bogey boards.  We had found one on a beach when we
first arrived in NZ, then bought a second at a thrift store for $2 a few weeks
ago.  We've only used them twice so far, but it's a whole lot of fun, probably
the closest thing we'll ever to get to surfing, with our old bodies.