Christmas at Waihi Beach

Happy Christmas everybody !!

Arrived at Waihi Beach on day before Xmas eve and the weather was pretty wild.
The site had a great swimming pool - the best yet, it was really warm and there was also a spa pool at about 35deg - and it had a waterslide which was emabarrassing for Emily to watch us oldies.
Unfortunately Jill was ill and we were unable to meet up with them on Christmas day as planned, but we had a great day, Santa even managed to find us - there was a fantastic rainbow spanning the bay and we all had a swim in the sea - Lasagne and roast veg for dinner with traditional pavlova for dessert. luvly.
Met a guy who was a canoe expert and he was able to give me all the tips I needed and more about building a strip canoe.
Would have liked to have stayed on but site was booked for months ahead so had to move on up North a bit to Whangamata

Shelley Beach Kauri Forest

Shelley Beach Kauri Forest
There was also one of the last stands of uncleared kauri forest nearby with a biggish tree in it - aparently the biggest tree still standing is North of Auckland and is 7 metres diameter.

Shelley Beach Waterpark visit

Dec 18th
Shelley Beach Water park
Also went to this park with lots of water gadgets which was fun - huge water driven clock, water sculptures etc - and swam in river which was very cold indeed

Shelley Beach

18 Dec

Shelley Beach Campsite
We stayed at Shelley beach campsite near Coromandel town for 3 or 4 nights. A really nice site on the beach again, and we got quite settled in. Had a couple of good trips, an eccentric potter had built this elaborate narrow guage railway up the side of the forested hill and created a wildlife and forest reserve. Fantastic views from the top and lots of bits and pieces to capture the imagination - you couldn't have doen something like this in the UK with health and safety and all that.

Witianga

Now travelling up the East coast of the Coromandel - camping on an Estuary at Witianga and we went Kyaking today.

Have booked ourselves in to a beach resort for Christmas Eve and Day which hopefully will be fun - campsites really take off after Christmas as the holidays begin and everyone goes to the beach it seems

Athenree

After Papamoa we stopped at this quiet little site - mostly old folks living there permanently in trucks and caravans. Beautiful quiet location. There were some pools in the river (very cold) and in onw there were these big eels up to 3 feet lonAg and also big trout. Little clubhouse full of old blokes - v friendly. Someone gave us some old Kauri gum which you can polish up and someone else gave us a cabbage from their little allotment garden.

Papamoa Beach

After leaving Opotiki we stayed one night at campsite right on this amazing beach - you can see Mount Maunganui in the distance

Opotiki

Stayed with friends Rob and Jill at their remote smallholding at Opotiki - they live in a housetruck when they are there and have a few sheep

Campervan

We bought ourselves a campervan while in Rotorua - we were very tempted by a 1970s commer truck we came across which had been fitted out with shower, bunks etc and certainly had character - took it out for a drive which was a bit exciting crashing through the gears and throwing everyone around in the back.

Slept on the fantasy overnight and opted for a little nissan which was for sale in the same yard. It has a hi top and a small pop top and there is 'plenty' of room for hanging out inside. It has seats that easily fold down to form a large double bed So far it seems to be a great little van and we keep coming across new things all the time. Found out it even has hot water heated by the engine so you could even have a bit of a shower at a push. Has fridge and freezer for when we can connect to mains power, good radio, 4wd but havent tried this yet, alarm, central locking and all the works. Seems to drive well so fingers crossed.

Not quite big enough for three so we have a little tent to take with us.

Rotorua

Our first week in NZ was spent in Rotorua. We stayed with our friend Nan (from Colorado, USA) who had a posh time share apartment which she generously shared with us. Then we bought our own campervan, more on that later.We looked around the town which has a strong sulphur smell due to the mud pools and bubbling activity under the earth. (It has been the only place where the smell outside the campervan is worse than the inside!!
Nan and I explored the museum of Art and History. This is a view from the top of the building. In the cellar, we looked around the pipe network which used to supply the building(once a spa retreat) with hot thermal water and mud baths.
We also went to Whakarewarewa which is a thermal reserve and a Maori cultural area. Maoris live in the village while we tourists look round. We saw a Fantastic display of singigng and dancing in a very small hut, very underplayed, but some indcredible voices which brought tears to our eyes!
We also went to the Rainbow Springs Kiwi Encounter. Here they are trying to save the kiwi bird from extinction with no funding from the government. The kiwi is a national icon.So many companies use it and everyone identifies new Zealanders as kiwis, I was really surprised noone of note was sponsoring such a noble cause.
Some of the other photos are of Aranui cave (in the Waitomo District), full of stalactites and stalacmites.Steve and Em are looking awe-struck! The Waitomo district has 300 limestone caves. We went in a boat into one cave to see hundreds of glow-worms, but no photos were allowed there. Amazing sight, we all had to be very quiet while we sat in dakness watching the tiny lights on the ceiling, amazing.

Meanwhile back at the ranch............. The next stage of our journey is New Zealand. We fly tomorrow (1st December) and meet up with Nan again in Rotorua. We will write again in this blog from over there. Hope you are all well. It is lovely to see your comments. Keep them coming.

We also got taken to a place called Soverign Hill in Ballarat which is a reconstruction of an old mining town. We panned for gold and got about 4 cents worth.

There was an old fashioned bowling alley with wooden balls and skittles. Bit harder work than Fakenham Superbowl.

Steve got stuck in cooking in the kitchen and helping get the flowers ready to sell .

We then hired a car and drove down to Melbourne (see Christmas tree picture) We met another friend called Claire who used to live in Norfolk. She took us to see where `Neighbours` is filmed and they were filming as we watched. Saw a few members of the cast. That was fun. Claire then took us to her parents place in the countryside near somewhere called Bendigo about 2/3 hours from Melbourne. They run a flower farm. Claire and her family are SO NICE. We had a great time.

They took us on an old fashioned paddle steamer and someone took this romantic picture of me and Steve!

Tony and Judy run a great cafe and work really hard. They managed to take a bit of time off to show us around. Steve and Tony went in for a sailing race, Em, Judy and myself worked hard walking round museums and drinking coffee.

Obviously we are encouraging responsible drinking and Em is only drinking a small bottle of beer!

This is when we visited Canberra and stayed with Tony and Judy. We went for a sunset walk and saw `heaps of roos`(learning the Aussie lingo). Beautiful.

This picture is in wrong order, but I don`t know how to move it.
We met Nan in Melbourne. She is also travelling around OZ and NZ. It feels really strange to see Christmas trees and decorations when it`s sunny.

Evening Sail at Port Douglas

Went out for a sail last evening with a couple from the Yacht Club Had a great sail although not much wind and met some interesting folk including a queenslander who could spin a yarn or two and someone brought a guitar on board and sang some songs - Stayed on for dinner at the Club.