Mark And Ann's Journal

We have had an energetic day today and are a bit musle tired.  We have done a couple of bush walks that we couldn't resist.  The first walk was another gorgous walk through Fern Gully.  It was called the twin Kauri forest.  We were literally surrounded by Kauris.  I also saw a small family of kiwis running through the undergrowth.  How special is that!  These trees are truely majestic and make you feel special just being near them.  We continued to drive along the coast heading for Coromandel.  We never get tired of looking at this beautiful country.  Around every corner was another bush track, valley view or breathtaking scene.  It is very winding in this part of the country.  The one place we kew we wanted to see was Hahei with its hot water beach and Cathedral Cove.  We hired our spade and headed for the hot beach.  For just 2 hours at the turn of low tide you can dig yourself a hot tub on the beach!  The only trouble was it was too hot.  I kept burning parts of my anatomy when the fresh ocean water took too long to reach me.  Mark dug the hole but didn't want to get sand in his pants so he just watched while I sat with about 100 others in this little sector of beach enjoying the hot water.  It was quite odd.  We then did our next trek (or tramp as the kiwis say) to Cathedral Cove.  This walk took 30 minutes down to the cove - what a strenuous trip.  I had a swim in the beautiful crystal clear green blue water and we walked the beaches and explored caves and rocks along the way.  We then had the rather gruelling climb back to the top which took 35 minutes - well it was uphill and there were about 10 flights of stairs at the beginning and some very steep climbs not to mention that we had to park the car halfway down the hill from the walk entry.  Our preparation walks have helped a lot though and we managed the walks fairly easily.  We then continued our scenic drive along the coast oohhing and aahhing often and taking many photos - over 500 so far on the trip!  We are currently at Whitianga at an internet cafe downloading photos and we hope to include some in our journal.  Fingers crossed.  We intend getting to Coromandel tonight so we can enjoy all their interesting shops etc. that we have been told about tomorrow.

It takes a long time to upload photos here so we have put some photos on Mark's facebook.