Monday - The Road to Coromandel

Today has been a very gentle day. We woke, broke our fast, then said goodbye to our plane. A strange place to stay, not particularly comfortable, but great fun.

Our first stop was the centre of Hamilton for the Vodafone store. Our problems with the phone were quickly resolved, so after a coffee and a quick look at the shops we were on our way again.

Next stop was at Morrinsville for groceries, then we took the back roads to the start of the Coromandel Peninsular at a town called Thames.

Thames is a fairly small town nowadays, but in the 1870s it was the largest town in New Zealand with over 20,000 inhabitants. The reason was gold! A group of four Cornish miners had found a rich golf vein and removed a huge quantity of gold in the first three weeks.    One vein of gold was so rich in an adjacent mine that the stampers kept clogging up with the amount of gold (about 20%) in the ore.

We visited the site of the original gold mine in Thames and had a delightful tour round the mine and the remaining outbuildings. Our guide was an ex sea skipper, originally from the UK, who now volunteers at the mine, which is trying to rebuild the original stampers.

Leaving the mine we drove north along the west side of the Coromandel. The views were wonderful, all mountains to our right and sea to our left, and another very winding road.

After some time we approached Coromandel harbour, and could see strange regular structures in the sand. We guessed it was oyster beds, which was confirmed when we rounded the corner and found the Coromandel Oyster Company.

Just north of Coromandel Town we found our bach for the next two nights, Parsloe's Cottage. It is a small two bedroomed cottage in the grounds of the owner's house, right next to the turning for Driving Creek Railway.

We had, of course, bought a dozen oysters at the store, so that was our starter sorted!! They were delicious. We followed that with barbecued lamb and aubergine with a watermelon salad, then had to retire indoors when the mossies started biting. And after trying to photograph the Tui bird unsuccessfully all trip, a pair of them came and sat in the tree right next to us and entertained us with the myriad of noises they can produce from their two voice boxes.