Today was 24 degrees, mostly sunny.
Another nice day so decided to take a drive around the coastline to Coromandel Town, about 45km away. Very nice scenic drive, stopped for coffee in the town, very like an old frontier town from the Old West! Then off to the Driving Creek Railway which is a narrow gauge railway originally built to bring clay down from the mountainside for potter Barry Brickell. About an hour long, the train journey included lots of reversing to change lines to get up the mountainside to a lookout point on the top. Lovely views from here but a bit hazy today, would be fantastic on a crystal clear day.
After that we headed back to Whitianga via an unsealed road, basically a road of loose gravel with lots of very tight bends and sheer drops which made for a very ‘exciting’ ride, particularly for Clare who wasn’t driving! Stopped at Waiau Falls (like to use a lot of vowels in their place names). There was a pool at the base of the falls to swim in, but far to cold for the likes of us.
Then on to a Kauri Tree grove. Kauri trees are tall trees native to New Zealand but suffering from die-back so we had to pass through a shoe scrub and disinfect unit both in and out of the walk. The area was full of prehistoric looking woodland and the trees were quite impressive.
Arrived back at the apartment and trying out the buttons on the car, discovered that the Sat Nav that we decided NOT to pay extra for with Avis is in fact a standard feature of the car! Result!