Kia Ora

Time was short in Auckland, but long enough to get a sense of the central downtown area, which is geared up to tourists and students alike. It's full of fast food places and tourist shops, but if you venture away from the main drag, Queen Street, you can find quirky boutiques and lovely cafés. Auckland seems a bit like LA, a city of suburbs, admittedly with an awful lot more marinas, hence it's name the "City of Sails". So just like you can't judge LA on the merits of Sunset Boulevard, you can't judge Auckland just on downtown. 

The Skytower is the main landmark, and I have found it quite hard to get my bearings. I walked along the harbour front, drove along Tamaki Drive, and visited the Auckland Museum, which was also serves as the war memorial to WW1.

One third of the 4.4m population lives in Auckland so as soon as you leave there are more animals than people. We did head up to Muriwai to view a gannet colony. The twitchers of the group were very excited that the cliff path provided such unprecedented views from above. Watching the waves thunder in there was no way that I would head into the water, and the beach was so long that I couldn't see the end of it!

Heading up to the Coromandel Peninsula was a bit like driving through the Yorkishire Dales, all lush green rolling hills. They just needed dry stone walls instead of fences. I even saw pheasants! Pow! Pow!

It's quite bizarre seeing camellias, rhododendrons, calla lillies, hawthorn and foxgloves all at their best, in October! Saw my first kiwi's being grown, on vines, a bit like grapes!

A quick trek through the forest led us to Cathedral Cove. It's a beautiful beach with a large walk through cave. It would be our only safe place to swim in the Pacific Ocean so a few of us went for a dip. It was brassic!!! Colder than Shell Beach. So I was in and out in less than 5 minutes!

Next stop was Hot Water Beach, literally two bays along. Spades in hand you headed along the beach to join the throng, dug a hold and wallowed in the water that bubbled up, which was really hot, in some cases scalding. 

Having been to the beach it seemed right and fitting to try the local Hokey Pokey ice cream - sort of vanilla with honeycomb and caramel. Yum!

Our home for the evening was Tuirua, a small one horse town, with a pub and a chip shop, and even the pub closed at 9pm! Most of us ended up with snapper and chips, sat on a bench down by the inlet, whilst being eagerly watched by the gulls!