Magic box, Bentley, Cathedral cove, hot water beach, torpedo boat, camping, ..... Annes' posting

Magic box, Bentley, Cathedral cove, hot water beach, torpedo boat, camping,

Day 76 – Feb. 16 –Whangamata to Hahei


We only know 2 people in this entire town, and when we went downtown to eat breakfast, one of them, Rosalie, drove by and tooted her horn. Made us feel like locals!


Drove all of 30 miles to the small, quaint town of Hahei. While looking for a place to stay, we noticed a beautiful maroon antique car parked on the lawn of Maggie’s B&B. We decided to check into vacancies there and she had one left. Ian and Doreen Johnstone, from Chichester, England, owned the 1938 Bentley convertible, and we got a tour of it. Doreen proclaimed that this is her car, and Ian has his own antique Bentley back home. He also has about a dozen other cars, built from 1904 to about 1940. He’s a semi-retired Eye, Nose, and Throat surgeon, who plays croquet and abhors golf and swimming. Doreen plays golf, loves to swim and abhors croquet. But they both love Bentleys, so I guess that is the glue that holds them together. Just kidding.


A 45-minute walk up and down the coastal hills from our B&B brought us to Cathedral Cove. Eons of waves pounding into a crack eventually created an inverted V-shaped arch big enough to drive a fully-loaded semi through. It is such a beautiful sight that it was used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Everybody who comes to Hahei who can walk for 45 minutes eventually makes his way to this spot, and it must be one of the most photographed places in the country. It’s a great swimming cove, and a natural stream falls over the cliff edge just at the water’s edge. As soon as you finish your swim, you can wash the salt water off in this fresh-water waterfall. You have to chase away the seagulls from the small pool formed by the falls, for this is where they bathe and drink.


Low tide is at 7:30 pm these days and if you get to Hot Water Beach before all the good places are taken, you can dig a hole in the sand and sit in the hot water that seeps into it. When we got there, there were already about 100 people who had the same idea, and they had claimed most of the good spots. Joe wandered around in his bare feet, feeling the temperature of the sand. When he found a place that felt right to his feet, he dug a hole with the shovel he borrowed from Maggie, just big enough for him to lie down in. He had to keep digging the entire time, piling sand up on the edges of his hole to keep the waves from the sea from dumping cold water into his hole. After a half-hour of soaking and digging, he had a bathing suit full of sand and sore arms. It was a novelty, but he’ll take the spas next time.


It was late when we got back from the beach and all of Hahei’s restaurants were closed (both of them – the pizza dive and the fish and chips bar). So we drove 15 minutes and took a 5-minute ferry to Whitianga. It is on the other side of a bay that we could have swum across in about 5 minutes. It truly was only about a 6-iron from one side to the other, but it would have taken an hour to drive around. The Fireplace restaurant in Whitianga, 200 feet from the ferry dock, had some of the best BBQ’d spareribs we’ve ever had, even at Sonny’s in Florida.


Day 77 – Feb. 17 – Hahei to Kuaotunu


At breakfast with Ian and Doreen, I mentioned that I’d once owned a British car, a Lotus Europa, that was nothing but trouble. ‘Yeah’, he said,’Lotus stands for Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious.’ No kidding.


Drove up the road to the tip of a peninsula that somebody bought, built a golf course on, called it The Dunes, and planted houses around its perimeter so they could call it a resort and charge high prices for golf. When we got there, a gaggle of ladies was leaving the course, as it was ladies day, and when they were gone, the parking lot was empty except for our car. Once again, we played alone.


It was a beautiful layout, with lots of big trees lining the fairways, doglegs, water running through it. But they had been having a drought and hadn’t been watering their fairways and they were mostly bare dirt with a few tufts of grass sticking out here and there. Had to hit a lot of shots off hardpan and dead grass.


A bit further south down the coast we came to the tiny village of Kuaotunu, where we stayed in a cabin in a campground, about the only place to stay. There was no place to eat except back down the road to Whitianga, where we ate last night, about a half-hour drive away. It was already 7 pm and that didn’t sound appealing. But we didn’t have any food.


There was a party going on just across the driveway from us, and I walked over there to say hi. I also had an ulterior motive that you might guess. They were about 10 couples, all about our ages, who’d known each other their whole lives, and get together here every year the same time in their camper vans, and fish and eat and party. They were just about to sit down and dig into their dinner and they insisted that we eat with them. It wasn’t hard to convince us, though we resisted, albeit feebly. They’d caught a bunch of red snapper, and had grilled it along with sausage, chicken, and ham. The women had cooked up potatoes, rice, salads, and one had made some apricot squares. In 5 minutes it was all gone, then they headed for the beach to do some ‘torpedo fishing’.


We tagged along with them to see what it was all about. They have a 4-foot long torpedo-shaped thingie with a propellor on the back and a light on the top. They drop it in the water with a line attached to it. As it speeds through the water, straight out from shore, it unreels line from a spool. Sometime prior to this, someone has prepared some 3-foot long lines with snaps on one end and a baited hook on the other. Once the torpedo has gotten far enough out in the sea, they start clipping these lines onto the line being pulled out to sea, about 30 feet apart. Once the line has all been played out, the torpedo is about 2 kilometers out from shore. Then they sit and wait for about an hour. By now it’s nearly totally dark. They start reeling it back in to see what they’ve caught. There were only 2 red snapper that were unlucky enough to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time tonight. I figure that, at $3,000 for the torpedo, those were a couple of expensive fish. Granted, they will use it many times, but how many fish do you have to catch before it pays for itself???


Day 78 – Feb. 18 – Kuaotunu to Fletcher Bay


As we said our good-byes, one of the Kiwis said he recognized me from having seen me on television during the 2001 US Senior Am. I couldn’t believe he had that kind of retention but he insisted. ‘Kint remimbah nimes, but ah nivah fahgit a fice. Sime as me ded, he nivah fahgot a fice, eethah.’


We’re headed for the northern tip of the Coromandel Peninsula. Our friends we met on the Cape Reinga bus trip, Peter and Maureen Morrow, told us they’d camped out there and painted such a vivid and glorious picture of waking up with the sun rising over the ocean that we wanted to see for ourselves.


The road from Kuaotunu to the town of Coromandel goes straight west, from one side of the peninsula to the other, over some steep mountains, and the road twists and turns and has lots of hairpin curves. Then the mountains end abruptly and you fall out of them onto the flat plain that extends about a mile to the town. We loaded up with enough food to get us through a couple of days of camping, then headed north, bound for the northern tip. The road hugs the coast, and the views the entire way were of the many islands in the bay between the peninsula and Auckland. One island is only 150 years old, a volcano that exploded out of the water in the mid-1800s. It is still only a solid mass of lava, with not a living thing on it, no tree or shrub, and no living animals. The water here is as clear as gin, with waving kelp and rocks on the bottom clearly visible. Each big rock sitting out in the water had some kind of sea bird sitting on it, white streaks down the rock attesting to the fact that they come there often.


The road went from 2-lane paved (sealed) to gravel, then to one-lane. We hardly ever saw another car (thank heavens), but a huge motor home, with ‘Duntentin’ splashed across the back, pulled over to let us by. This area is mostly uninhabited except for the occasional farmhouse surrounded by sheep or cows. There are more beaches than people, and almost all of them are empty.


Fletcher Bay is a small, lovely crescent beach, at the very end of the road and the very tip of the peninsula. During the summer months, it is packed with campers, but we are now into fall here, so there were just a handful of other campers. We had a choice spot to ourselves, flat, grassy, perched on a small bluff right above the beach under some huge trees. Joe immediately hopped into the warm water and spent an hour or so snorkeling around. And the resident ducks immediately came over to see if I was a soft touch. I was. To the tune of a half-loaf of stale bread. A big mistake. From that moment until we drove away the next day, these 6 ducks never got more than 5 feet from one of us, usually closer. They sat, or stood, facing us, and just stared at us, quacking quietly every now and then to remind us they were there.


Below us on the beach was a one-man tent inhabited by Fred Oesch, an architect writing a book on his work, from Virginia, with whom we spent a companionable hour. Further away were 3 Kiwis and a Maori who were here mostly to drink and they had a good start on things when we wandered by. The Maori was the furthest gone, and he asked our names about once every 3 minutes.


Campgrounds are maintained by the Department of Conservation, and are always clean, have toilets, showers, and running water. Makes it convenient to camp. We spent a comfortable night, sleeping well, thanks to the soothing sounds of waves slapping the shore, but probably more due to the air mattresses we bought after our last miserable night on the ground.


Day 79 – Feb. 19 – Fletcher Bay to Stony Bay


We were awakened early by one of our web-footed friends right outside our tent letting us know he was hungry and it was time for his breakfast. I didn’t know ducks could quack that loudly. Fred said his good-byes, saying he was off to see Stony Bay before heading down the peninsula. We packed up, after tossing the rest of the stale loaf to our feathered friends, and followed Fred back the way we’d come in, then turned north again on the road to the other campground on the peninsula, Stony Bay. We met Fred again, for one split second, when we came around a very sharp curve where the road was narrow, and practically plowed into him. Scared me so badly my heart pounded for the next 5 minutes!


The Stony Bay campground was almost totally empty. We had our choice of campsites and chose one under a tree close to the very rocky beach. While Joe struggled against a tide that kept shoving him towards land (better than AWAY from land), I sat under the tree and read a book. Two men in scruffy boots with 2 border collies strode purposefully by, right past the ‘No Dogs’ signs. Soon I heard a commotion and turned around to see a sea of black cows headed straight for me, the tent, and our stuff strewn about the ground. I stood up, trying to make myself look bigger, and they parted around our tent and stuff, leaving steaming brown piles in their wake.


Pretty soon, from the other direction, came endless sheep. Rather than passing by on the road, they spread out over the entire campground, and were there to stay. The rest of our visit resonated with soft Baaaaas and the snip, snip sound as they ripped the grass out of the ground by the roots. We had to be careful where we stepped on the way to the ‘facilities’.


This campground, too, had its resident ducks, who adopted us and snuggled up to us, like their Fletcher Bay cousins, after I shared my bread with them.


After a dinner of cold chicken, pickles, and cheese, we drifted over to the next-door-campers and chatted until dark. “A cyclone is headed our way in the night”, one of them said. I’d always thought a cyclone was like a tornado, so I asked him what it meant to Kiwis. “Just a bit o’ rain and wind”. Well, early in the morning, around 4 am, it started POURING, and the wind came up. The cyclone had arrived.


Day 80 – Feb. 20 – Stony Bay to Miranda Hot Springs


The deluge was so loud it kept us awake, so as soon as it was light, and there was a slight let-up in the downpour, we leapt from the tent, unstaked it, tossed it, soaking wet, into the trunk and were off. Slipping and sliding down the wet road. Glad we hadn’t spent the night in Fletcher Bay because there are a lot of places on that road where you drove through streams, rather than over bridges. These ‘fords’ would have been so full of water that a car wouldn’t have been able to get through them and we’d have been stuck on the other side until the ‘flooding’ abated.


It rained all day, the wind blowing it sideways and tossing the car about on the road. The water that the prior days had been so clear was now a murky, angry brown, from all the sand stirred up by the waves. The islands that dot the bay were completely obscured by the low, heavy clouds. Our lovely weather has disappeared. But it’s still warm.


Joe loves to sit in hot water, so we pulled into the town of Miranda Hot Springs, that consists only of the hot springs complex. They had lost power several hours ago due to the high winds, and they were taking everything out of the ice cream freezer. We offered to take some of it off their hands, but they just laughed. They gave us a very nice room and the first thing we did was spread out our tent, rainfly, sleeping bags, and wet clothes all over the beds, tables, and chairs. Then we donned our bathing suits and headed for the hot pool, just a few feet away, for a soak in the rain.


The hot springs has its resident ducks, too, who came waddling at top speed over to our deck as soon as we stepped out onto it. I had the sliding doors open for ventilation so the camping gear would dry out faster and was sitting at the table, inside the room, eating something. A movement caught my eye and I looked down on the floor beside my chair leg and a tiny sparrow was looking up at me with a look that could only be interpreted as begging. I shooed it out the door without giving it anything. Didn’t want to encourage bad habits.


Day 81 – Feb. 21 – Miranda Hot Springs to Howich


The rain has ended but the skies are still threatening. The book said that it’s often rainy on the east side of the Hunua Range, where we are, so we’re getting out of here and looking for some good weather. We leave in 4 days, and we’re putting off getting into Auckland as long as we can. We don’t want this trip to end. There’s a golf course that the book says is international quality, and we’re off to play it. It’s close to Auckland, but still not in it. It’s the Formosa International, owned by Japanese, and is sort of a resort, with villas you can rent.


Sure enough, once we rounded the north end of the Hunua Range, the clouds parted, the sun came out, and we saw the sky again. The road between the hot springs and where the golf course is runs through hilly country, with narrow, winding roads, imagine that. It is the winter home for millions of birds, who fly down here all the way from Alaska, Siberia, and other places thousands of miles away. We saw one bird who must have had a rough trip, as he seemed to have a broken wing. He was sitting all alone on the ground, and stayed in one place for about 15 minutes, something strange for a bird to do. Every now and then he’d stretch out one wing and sort of topple over, so we think he’s one who might not make it back north for the summer.


Today they were having a bike event, and bicyclists of all sizes, shapes, ages, and abilities, riding fancy, expensive racing bikes with microscopic seats to slow, heavy, balloon-tired old-lady bikes were all over the place. Some riding side-by-side so that we had to stay behind them until any incoming cars (a rarity) got by.


The Formosa International was, indeed, a good course, and had a full parking lot (that was a first). A very rude guy in the pro shop told us we probably would have to play by ourselves, ‘The Korean couple signed up to play behind you won’t want to play with you, and the rest of the groups are foursomes’. Oh, well. We ate a delicious lunch, then teed off, alone of course, behind the Korean couple who jumped in front of us. But soon another Korean guy, very friendly, joined us, and we had a fun round with him.


We figure we might as well just play golf every day while we’re in the Auckland area until we leave in several days. So we picked out another golf course, at the northern tip of yet another peninsula, called Howich. Drove to a motel nearby and booked a room. Then drove to the course and checked it out. It’s VERY hilly, with a lot of trees, and superb views out over water in both directions.


Day 82 – Feb. 22 – Howich Layover Day


Getting a tee time was no problem, and, once again, we played by ourselves. This course was really a mountain climb, up and down, up and down, steep hills, dragging or pushing our trundlers. (I’ll never get over being amused by that word. And the grocery carts are ‘trolleys’, also humorous to me.) The fairways are lined up parallel to one another, a real shooting gallery, with trees, but not much real estate, in between the fairways. All day long we heard the sound of thwack, thump, thud as balls rammed into lumber and bounced all over the place. Several times balls rolled, ricocheted, or flew past us, dangerously close. In spite of the close calls, I was 2 under for one of the nines. Won’t talk about the other nine.


After yet another Indian dinner, we went to see the movie ‘Valkyrie’, with Tom Cruise. Joe was sitting slouched in his seat the entire time, and when we got home, he couldn’t move. His back had seized up on him, and he went straight to bed in agony. Oh, my God, and here we are just a few days from having to lug our baggage and golf clubs all over kingdom come!


Day 83 – Feb. 23 – Howich again


Joe’s back is really in bad shape. In order to get to the bathroom this morning, he had to slowly roll out of bed, which took 10 tries and 15 minutes, then crawl like a baby on hands and knees. Then, when he got to the toilet, that was yet another issue, which I won’t even go into. The whole episode took about 45 minutes. This doesn’t bode well for leaving NZ in a couple of days.


This is the day we have to get the car all cleaned up and ready to turn back to the dealer.. The owner of the motel, who is by now one of my best friends, Linda Mannix, backed her car out of her garage and let me use that space for all the preparation I’m going to do. First thing I had to do, all by myself, since Joe is out of the picture, is take everything out of the car and sort it into piles: the ‘trash’ pile, the ‘giveaway’ pile (Linda has friends, she says, who’ll take everything we don’t want), the stuff that goes in suitcase 1, 2, or3 or the golf clubs case, and the ‘I-don’t-whether-we-want-it-or-not’ pile. That took an hour.


An aside: When we first started roaming around NZ, Joe driving and me navigating, I had a pile of guide books, golf books, maps, brochures, and pens, all of which I had to deal with every time we stopped the car and got out. And back in again. I tossed them into the glove box, the door panel, the little box between the seats, tossed them on top of the dashboard, and stuffed them up above the visor. I was always looking for something that I needed and it was always in a different place. And I always had the pile, or some portion of it on my lap, for I was constantly consulting one of the things in the pile. I had Joe stop the car about every half-mile the first couple of weeks so I could take a picture, and pretty soon these shenanigans got really old.


Finally, tired to death of maneuvering the piles, I asked a motel owner if she had a cardboard box that I could have to put them in. Sure, and she reached into her garage and grabbed a box that had had coffee tins in it, just smaller than the biggest book in my pile. This made life immeasurably easier for me. We even gave it a name – the “Magic Box”. And it was the first thing I took into the room at the end of each day, and the first thing I put in the car the next day. It was always either on my lap or on the floor in front of my seat. I found I could hook a pen in the corner, so I never had to search for a pen again.


As the days went by, I hoisted the ‘Magic Box’ on and off my lap, and on and off the floor of the car, into and out of motel rooms, countless times. ‘Don’t forget the Magic Box,’ and ‘Where’s the Magic Box?’ we said a million times. I used it not only for books and maps and brochures, but to hold apricots and drink bottles and string and business cards from friends and bread to feed the seagulls. I picked up up and put it down so many times that the corners began to rip. I hoped it wouldn’t fall apart before the end of our NZ wanderings. It didn’t.


So now I’m in the final motel room, surrounded by all the stuff we plan to take home with us, and there’s the Magic Box sitting there, still loyally holding all the books, maps, brochures, and other debris we’ve piled into it over the weeks and months. We no longer need it. I take everything out of it, go through it, toss most of it, and now it’s sitting there empty for the first time since we’ve started using it. As I look at it, now empty and ragged, misshapen, with all its corners ripped and torn, I feel like I’m saying good-bye to an old, faithful friend. And I started crying! I think I must be the first person in the history of the world to cry over a cardboard box.


After emptying the car, I called around to find a place that would let us use their hose and vacuum and all the supplies we’d need to wash it ourselves. The first place I called said they could do even better than that: they would come to our motel, clean the car inside and out (and even get all the cow and sheep poop out from under it), vacuum it, using their own soap and Windex (or whatever supplies they needed) and even their own water and make it look brand-new. I’m thinking $200 US at least for all that. ‘How much’, I asked with trepidation: only $45 US!! They’d be there in 20 minutes. Life is good. NZ is wonderful!


Day 84 – Feb. 24 – Howich again


Today Joe was still unable to stand, and I’m worried that he might not get well enough in time to get on the plane. He’s taking a lot of pain killers and muscle relaxants, and staying in bed, mostly sleeping and watching rugby games on tv.


It really feels like we’re leaving NZ. Today we have to give up the car and that means we are stranded in the motel. We still have 5 more meals to get through before we leave for the airport, so I have to figure out how and what we’re going to eat. Off to get enough cash to get through the remaining hours, then drove for an hour to the other side of Auckland to return the car to the Devonport car dealer from whom we rented it. Derek, they owner, didn’t even look at the car for dents, dings, or anything. Just said it looked clean and asked how much golf we played and where. Then he took me to the ferry terminal 3 km away, I sailed across the bay to downtown Auckland, took the bus back to a spot about ½ mile away from the motel. There were a lot of shops there, so I bought food for the rest of the day.


There must be some major kind of garbage pickup in this city, for beside the sidewalk outside of nearly every house was a huge mound of debris. Everything the occupant didn’t want was piled up – mattresses, large appliances, lumber, cardboard boxes, clothes, chairs, anything at all, didn’t seem to be any restrictions. I didn’t see the vehicle they used to pick up all this mess, but they must have some big arm with grabbers to wrap around the stuff and swing it around into a waiting bin. Wish we had something like that at home. We always have to rent a truck, load the stuff into the truck, drive to the ‘transfer station’ (euphemism for ‘dump’), and pay somebody to let us unload it ourselves into a number of specific bins.


The big news on national tv tonight was whether or not the name of the town Wanganui should be changed to Whanganui. The Maoris claim there is no such thing as a ‘big Wanga’ but there is a ‘big Whanga’, so it needs to be changed to appease them. Such huge issues these Kiwis have to deal with!


Day 85 – Feb. 25 - Leaving NZ


Linda, the owner of this motel, told me that a homeless man had spent the night outside of her motel and she felt sorry for him. There aren’t many homeless people in NZ, for they’re offered homes rent-free if they can’t pay, and there are places they can eat if they don’t have money. Linda went outside the next day armed with a loaf of bread so that he didn’t starve. When she offered it to him, he turned her down. “No, thanks, me lady, I’m on a diet.”


Joe’s finally ambulatory again. Thank goodness, for today we fly out of here, and I need him to help carry all our stuff. Our plane doesn’t leave until 6 pm, and we aren’t leaving here on the shuttle until 2:30, so we spent a boring day just sitting around waiting, reading, sleeping, walking out on the balcony and looking at the sky. The shuttle finally came, we tossed our luggage into the van, hugged Linda good-bye, said we’d stay in touch, and off we went to Auckland’s airport. Right on time, our plane took off, and we flew over the northeastern part of the north island, looking down on country we now know a bit. The sun was still high, and we could make out the roads we drove on and the towns we went through, the coastline we walked along, the golf courses we played. Then clouds obscured the land and we saw no more of this country that we have come to love so dearly. With a smile and a tear, I said silently, ‘Good-bye, New Zealand, see you next December.’