Tuesday March 17th – Heading for Home

Last day of the trip and a slow drive down the coast and then back to Hamilton before catching our flight home at 7pm. The objective of this trip was to have a quick look around the Coromandel to see if it's worth coming back for a longer holiday next year covering both the Coromandel Peninsular and East Cape.

After being woken by doors slamming at about 7am, we were up at 8 and then gone by 9am, again missing breakfast. The first stop was about half an hour away at the small town of Tairua. The main drag of the town in on the main State Highway 25, which is a kilometre or so inland. Most of the houses are then between SH25 and the beach, with some houses built on Paku summit, a volcanic peak at the waters edge. We headed to Paku Summit and did the walk up to the peak to get great views of the both Tairua Beach, Pauanui Beach, which is on the other side of the inlet and the respective townships. Although Pauanui is no more than half a kilometre across the inlet, to get to it, you have to return to SH25, drive 11 kilometres down the road and then 12ks back to the coast to get to the town. As Pauanui is the holiday spot for wealthy Aucklanders, so we thought we'd better go and have a look to see what all the fuss is about. And having now been there, we don't know. There is the waterways, which is where all the wealthy houses are with their private moorings and boat ramps, but beyond that there didn't seem to be very much to the town at all. A couple of small shops and virtually nobody about.

From Pauanui we headed down to Whangamata where we had a steak sandwich lunch in a small cafe, then on to Waihi and then the Karangahape Gorge. I didn't know anything about the Gorge, other than it was the way to get from Waihi back to Paeroa. On the way however, there was a walkway up the gorge to the site of an old gold mine. The walk was really beautiful and a really worthwhile walk. A torch is recommended for some of the tunnels you have to walk through, but we didn't have one, so the light on my camera had to suffice to light the way for us.

Unfortunately, the battery went flat just at the start of the longest tunnel, so we had to go back the way we came, but that didn't matter as we'd taken lots of cool photos and really enjoyed the walk that we did.

From there it was on to Paeroa, to have one of their world famous in New Zealand drinks, until we discovered how depressing Paeroa was, so we headed off for a wander round Morrinsville before heading for the airport and the plane home from where I am finishing off this blog entry.