After Bay of Islands we headed back south towards Auckland. We spent the night at Fat Camel Hostel...way dodgey. Good thing we were only there for a night. Our bus pass got a little screwy with switching around directions (apparently we can only drive north with our pass...who knows) so we decided to do a road trip! The Dutch bloke Wouter aka Walter only had a week left in NZ as well and hadnt been to the places we were planning to see on our road trip so he decided to tag along with our road trip. Woo hoo! Driving on the left again!
So, we laid down some ground rules for Walter including yes, we listen to girly music and sing very loudly, no, we do not have pillow fights and paint each others nails, yes, we eat and pee alot, and make sure Karina eats every couple hours or else she gets grumpy and we set off on our trip. Only after did we learn he can't drive (no license) or navigate (gets carsick) so we mostly had him sit in the backseat and occasionally prepare food for us, but it's ok he didn't complain too much...except whenever Karina wanted a snack...and we had a lot of fun teaching him American slang and different figures of speech/sayings. Our personal favorite is "hindsight is 20/20" after explaining it he says "oh yeah we have a phrase for that to- you always know better after something happens," definitely not as creative!!
First destination: Coromandel peninsula. This is the northeast part of the north island and its known for its mussels, beaches and gorgeous scenery. The drive should have been a three hour drive or so but it took us about 6 -- oops! Karina drove most of this leg of the journey while I took pictures of beaches, valleys and sheep. So pretty! The road was windy and full of sharp curves and after a couple hours of screams from the driver (she swears she wasn't scared, the screams just helped her make some of the turns) and a few yelps from the passengers (seems like the proper thing to do when your driver is shrieking!), we stopped off at the town of Coromandel for a picnic lunch alongside the beach. We were told that the best mussels in the country were from this little shop called The Coromandel Smoking Company, so naturally I had to get some. They had all kinds of flavors! I got lemon/garlic and smoked chilli. Omg. Out of this world!! $4 for 8 mussels that were like three times as big as they are back home! I'd say they were about 1 inch by three inches and almost an inch thick. Silly me made the mistake of asking how to take the shell off...the lady in the store looked at me like I had three heads...guess they don't serve mussels in shells around here! They were delicious and now I'm sad because seafood is so expensive back home and I've found my new food passion :-/
After lunch, we continued to drive along through some small towns and made our way around the peninsula. We were doing great until we got to Rotary City (ok that's not what it's called but that's what I'm calling it) and somehow ended up driving in the wrong direction, then back to the Rotary City, then back around in circles and down dead end streets because the signs for our destination of Hahei disappeared. A note about kiwis giving directions: they suck at it. A typical response to how to get somewhere usually involves "oh it's easy! Just take a left and drive down there then take a right over there then it'll just be right there!" Right where people?!?! Be more specific please!!
Anyways after a little two hour detour we finally arrived to a whole bunch of darkness in Hahei. No street lights in these parts and traffic lights are hundreds of miles apart! Who needs traffic lights when you have rotaries...grrr stupid rotaries. We stopped at a beachside hostel and had a private apartment room for the night. There was a queen sized bed and two twin beds, a mini kitchen and a fridge. Great success! We also learned that in order to see the hot water beach we drove here to see, you had to go around low tide which was either 3:30am or 3:30pm. We had to keep moving the next day so you guessed it, 3:30am means go time!! After a tough day of navigating and taking pictures, yours truly went to bed at 8pm and Karina and Walter went to check out the nightlife at a local pub. Fortunately for me the town was deserted and not many people were at the pub so I didn't miss much!
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