Coromandel Peninsula

On The Coromandel Peninsula (directly to the East of Auckland), we visited a place called “Hot Water Beach”, where just underneath the sand, hot water is escaping from some underground spring. So we dug in our feet, expecting some warm water but had to jump out immediately as the beach could be named boiling water below beach.

While at the beach, somebody nearby spotted a school of dolphins off in the distance. We could see maybe 5-10 of them -- see the video where we caught a great glimpse of one dolphins showing off as they all swam by at an impressive pace.




Lastly, a 45-minute hike from Boiling Water Below Beach brought us to a beautiful spot called Cathedral Cove. The Ocean slowly carved this cathedral shape (20-25 feet high) from a landmass that separated to gorgeous beaches. Now people walk through the cathedral between the two.

Boat - Trees - Beach

After a 6+ hour sailing tour through the Bay of Islands on the East coast, we drove across to the West coast to spend some time on Baylys Beach. On the way, we stopped in the Waipoua National Forest to see one of the oldest living Kauri trees, which used to dominate much of the Northern New Zealand landscape. For size perspective, you can see Angie in a black shirt in the lower right corner. We could only fit into the camera frame the lower portion of this tree that has seen 2,000 years, all but the last 700 years or so sans humans. The sap from these gigantic trees fell to the ground and provided for the gum export industry for decades in the 1800s.

We are learning a lot of the history, but not enough about the present variations in such things as sand temperature on bare feet.

So we ended the day by coming into a small town of Baylys Beach. What’s unique about this beach is the road just turns into the beach and then at low tide people drive as far as they want down the coast, over 90 miles. So they drive a while, camp, hang out on a private stretch of beautiful ocean beach, and then move on. There are maybe just one or two other access points along the way.

Yet given our 2-wheel drive car, the approaching high tide, and our spinning wheels, we got nervous about .05 miles into it and drove the car back to the main road. But it’s a good walk too...

Boring Lunch

This boring lunch video was from last week in Whangarai on our way up to The Bay of Islands. It seems every town has some natural wonder nearby.

Piha, West Coast NZ

Wow! Auckland didn’t feel too much different from other big cities, but leaving Auckland was different: As long as it would take us to get from Mpls to an outer suburb, we drove from Auckland to the West Coast, to spend 3 days on a black volcanic surf beach called Piha (See photos). We’re told this is the beach where the piano was filmed - we’re on sort of on a global movie set tour.

Jim’s should get his money back because the surfboard he hired didn’t work.

What about sheep, you say? Well don’t you just love stereotypes that are there for a reason. Our first stay outside of the city and our nearest neighbors are two sheep in the front yard. It beats the sound of a lawn mower.

We’ll check in from up North…

Auckland, New Zealand

We made it! We got our bearings in the big city for three days. We set up a bank account, phones, bought a car. We are now heading out to see the country before making our way to Wellington.

We have phone numbers now:
Angie 64-211-802-252
Jim 64-211-803-853

Or if you’re into incredibly cheap phone calls, you can download Skype and call us. (www.skype.com). Remember, we’re 19 hours ahead of Central Standard Time. The photo is of Auckland City from across the harbor in Davenport.

More to come...

Fiji

We missed Christmas in the air but there’s nothing like decorated Palm Trees to remind you of the holidays. We celebrated New Year’s Eve in Fiji and had to try the local brew called Kava, which is a fermented root. It doesn’t taste all that good, but on the bright side, it does make your mouth go immediately numb.

With over 300 Islands in Fiji, it was tough to pick just one. We felt lucky stay on an Island called Malolo Lai. The Fijians we’re incredibly friendly people and struck us as high energy considering how hot it was in the heat of summer.

You may recognize the raft in the photo. It’s from the movie Castaway, which was filmed just few Islands over from Malolo Lai.

And it wouldn’t be an Island vacation without about 4,000 sunset photos. Happy New Year!!