Coromandel

Alright ladies and gents, you need an update on my life. Im I right or am I right?

So, after cheating death with my adventures into the cave I hoped on a bus and safely made it to Auckland. Once there I watch the Seahawks win the super bowl (HELL YES!!), made some new funny friends and set off to rent a car. 

Headed to the rental car agency with no fear and little plans. Once there the extremely relaxed lady told me a few horror stories that made sure I was terrified while leaving the lot. My biggest fear was that I would crash before even leaving the lot. Second biggest was that I would pull the car out into the wrong lane and crash right in front of the lot. Neither happened thankfully and I was on my way!

I decided to head to hobbiton, it sounded like a place one must go while in NZ.  Incase you don't know its the set of the hobbits town from the Lord of the Ring series.  Honestly it really is not my thing but, people were all telling me how awesome it was.  So I hoped in my little red toyota, eyes filled with fear and jumped on the highway. Two tense hours later I stopped at a McDonalds to make sure I was going the right direction. Thats when I realized everything in the car was Japanese. The navigation systems itself only showed roads in Japan and only spoke Japanese. Well shucks, thank god for iPhones! I downed my first McD's in years, gripped the wheel and flew to the shire.  After about 3 wrong turns and a panicked turn around for fear of running out of gas I made it.  

McDs is super fancy here

I paid the girls $75 for my ticket and set out to see small lumps of grass with doors in it.  So this hobbit place cost like 4million to build.  Im pretty sure that I could have built it myself for less then a mill. It was really neat to see, thats the exact place the movie was filmed. But, it just wasn't floating my boat.  I thought the best part of the tour was driving through fields of sheep and the sheep like to play chicken with the tour bus ha! I did take lots of photos just incase any one was more excited than me…

After leaving the shire I needed to find a place to sleep. I headed towards the bay of plenty and found a cool campground just north of Mnt. Maunganui. While checking in the woman asked me question after question and she finally figured out I planned on sleeping in my car and only eating peanut butter. This situation sounded amazing to me but really freaked her out. So, she called over one of the resident campers and explained my "situation" and asked him to look after me. As soon as I was able to park my little red lady bug he came over with a beer and informed me that he and his son would be cooking dinner.  I chugged the beer and turned down dinner, not that his pony tail or eye brow piercing was turning me off from the situation, I just needed to rest after all the stress of driving. 

Whilst eating my peanut butter and honey sammy in the front seat of the car there was a knock on the window. My new buddy had come to get me because dinner was ready and he told me eating alone in my car was just sad.  We all sat on the front porch of his "home" that was really just a small shed with room for a bed, TV and sink. His 16year old son and I drank a few beers, ate spaghetti and watched the sunset. By that pointed I felt my chances of getting raped and murdered growing as it got darker so I headed back into my car locked the doors and put towels over all the windows. Then proceeded to have the worst nights sleep of my life. Waking up just as my friends were headed off to school/work I slowly crawled out of the car, unable to fully move my spine into its proper position.  Thankfully this campground had hot springs!!! They didn't even small bad! Holler!! After staying in the hot springs for far to long I decided to start my day.  

I headed up the coromandel peninsula towards Whitianga. On the way I stopped at a ton of fruit stands that people had in their front yard and purchased way more fruit than any one person should consume in 3 days.

I also stopped at hot water beach, where the hot spring water flows up from the sand and is very hot!

Some random man laying in the hot sand

My favorite however was Cathedral cove, I had no clue that it was such a long walk there but it was well worth it.  After hiking for about an hour you pop out on this amazing beach! I wish I had known it was such a long walk from the car, I would have brought snack and a towel. But, thats what you get when you think you know everything and refuse to read a guide book. 

Feeling exhausted from my car sleep and all the driving up and down the small mountains along the coast I decided to sleep in hostel that night. I stopped at the first place I saw "the cats pajamas" considering that I don't get along with most cats it should have been my first sign.  But, I am stubborn and didn't listen to my instincts.  The place was a filthy mess, it smelled horrible and everyone was fat and German. I wanted to go back to my car and cry but, I stayed there anyways. To help cheer myself up I went out to a nice dinner on the waterfront. 

The next morning I woke up at 7am and ran out of there as fast as humanly possible.  The weather had turned to crap so I drove straight to coromandel town, parked my car and sat in it for 2 hours trying to decide what to do.  One thing I find challenging when you have all the options in the world and no plans is making a plan.  I couldn't decide a darn thing. I was a lost sheep, I would go to one beach loose interest then go to a park get bored go to a store, Finally I decided on a hostel and checked in to the YHA where I ate some fruit and then wandered around the town.  Later that day my I met my roommate a 40 year old tornado of a woman. She was an English lesbian traveling alone who liked to party.  She later talked me in to going to the local pub for a beer. One beer turned into 7 and before I knew it we had 15 new friends I was singing "never ever" on the mic for karaoke night. If you didn't know already, now you know that is the only song I will ever do karaoke to.  We danced all night with our new Kiwi friends.  Most of them were barefoot, missing teeth and over the age of 50, two of them kept falling down and one lost his shoes.  They were winners!!! Realizing I was going to have to be the adult in the situation I rounded up my middle aged friends and led them all back to the hostel.  Where I fell asleep and they continued to dance and drink wine to some music I had never even heard. 

Here are my barefoot friends helping each other off the floor

The next morning I was off again in my little red speed racer.  I said my good byes to the old people recovering on the couch, ate 2 bowls of fruit and headed out on the highway with no clue where I was going.  The weather was still touch and go and I really had no clue what to do so I started to drive to Thames.  I got there and it sucked, I had some coffee and walked to some shops. One shop I stopped at was filled with 80 year old women and even they didn't know of anything good to do in Thames! That was that I was getting the hell out of there and contended to drive back into Auckland where I spent the night and caught my flight the next day to Queenstown.

More Fruit!!