Up bright and early at 7am to start the walk to Cathedral Cove. At the end of Hahei beach, the sign indicated this was a 70 minute walk, so straight back up to the car and whizzed around to the lookout point. The walk from there was a much more palatable 25 minutes each way – although we were frequently out of breath, pausing frequently to ‘admire the views’ while the local grandmothers power walked their way past us.

When we reached Cathedral Cove, I ran up and down the beach taking snaps while Laura sat down in the the cave for which the beach is named. Bumped into a fellow taking snaps of his back pack for some outdoor fashion magazine and he handed me his very nice camera with ultra wide lens to take a few pictures of him walking through the cave. Different.

Back to the hostel to check out and on the road again to Coromandel Town. We spotted an old fellow hitch-hiking and thought we’d do him a favour. Sadly when he got in, we quickly realised that the high visibility vest was not because he was headed to work in Coromandel, but rather because he was crazy and is probably usually found walking along the middle of the road.

The smell was not great either – thank goodness it was a hire car.

Fortunately we had decided to take the unsealed road to Coromandel and the old fellow was headed the other way. Despite his protestations that it was a terrible road and that we would be better off continuing up the east coast, we insisted and bade him good luck finding his next ride.

As it happens, he was right, the road was terrible! It was in the process of being sealed, but for the majority of the drive it was a rocky gravel track that wound seemingly forever across the peninsula. We were relieved when we emerged at the other side and Coromandel Town swung into view.

We headed to UMU cafe where I tucked into a massive breakfast (served with garlic bread…) while Laura had the best scrambled eggs on toast, ever. The coffee was also fantastic and we left refreshed and eager to get back to Auckland.

It was a long, windy and uneventful drive down the pebbly beaches of the west coast of the peninsula to Thames. We stopped there for a brief refresher at the Butterfly Sanctuary. Plenty to see, including some quails and other little birds – a nice stop but don’t go out of your way!

We then flew on to Auckland as we planned to reach the Villa Maria winery for the 3pm tour. We had no idea where it was, but Laura managed to save the day with some excellent navigation and we arrived with just minutes to spare (which were spent changing out of our scruffy beach wear and into something more befitting a wine tasting).

There was just us and a second couple on the free tour, which lasted about an hour. The guide was very interesting and took us through the plant; grape delivery, fermentation tanks, bottling plant… Did you know that fish bladders are used to remove the grape bits from wine? Wow! It is referred to as ‘isinglass’ so as not to put you off your drink. Vegetarians take note.

We then bought two sets of wine tastings for NZD$10 each, which was fantastic value for some gorgeous wines. We asked for the tasting menus to be shaken up a bit to avoid any overlapping and the tour guide/wine waiter was happy to accommodate. One of the best was a delicious noble riesling that cannot be exported to Europe due to it being too sweet! We would have loved to take a bottle with is but were sure it wouldn’t survive long in our backpacks.

It really is a great option if you are killing time before a flight from Auckland.

I only took a few sips of each as I still had to drive on to the Garden Lodge in the Parnell district of Auckland. We checked in and dropped our bags before taking a drive through the city centre for a quick look. It really was much like any city in UK – plenty of big shopping centres, but there are better ways to spend your time on the other side of the planet! Eventually we ended up at Mount Eden park, a dormant volcanic cone that looks over the city. With a car park at the top, it was perfect for a quick walk round the cone before sitting on the grass and watching the sun set over the Auckland suburbs.

We headed back to the hostel and walked to the main street in Parnell for some food. It is a lovely area with plenty of sophisticated eating options. We plumped for the Java Room recommended by Lonely Planet – it had a good looking menu and a nice outside seating area as the evening was nice and warm.

For starter we shared a lime/chilli/coconut marinaded raw snapper, which was not as nice as the similar dish in the Cook Islands, but nice nonetheless. I then had a tasty spicy curry with coconut rice and Laura had a Vietnamese salad. Unfortunately this did not contain the main ingredients listed on the menu – pawpaw and mint. We spoke to the waiter – apparently the chef had run out of both ingredients!

They took the course off the bill and offered us a replacement, but we were already comfortably full so finished off what we had and headed back to the hostel to pack for our flight in the morning, before heading to bed.

Up at 7:30am and to a local fruit shop to pick up a simple breakfast. We hit the road straight away and headed to the Orakei Korako thermal terraces. As it was still early we had the small ferry boat to ourselves and only spotted a few fellow visitors around the walkways. Apparently, the water levels in the terraces were very low this year and as such the famed colours were very subdued – probably not a recommended sight if time is short.

The next stop on the geothermal route was the Waitapu hotsprings near Rotorua. These are the springs that most people will associate with New Zealand, filled with colourful pools of yellow, green, orange and brown bubbling mud which Laura claimed smelled not unlike my feet. Lies! The famous Champagne Pool was particularly impressive. It was a beautiful sunny day and we enjoyed the long walk around the park – although it was very busy.

Hungry, we headed into Rotorua and stopped at Wellin’s Noodle Shop, as recommended by the Lonely Planet. The beef noodles and the noodle soup were as good as we had hoped, and afterwards we tramped next door for a couple of huge ice creams from Lady Jane’s Ice Cream Emporium. Two cones, five scoops in each, and all over us by the time we were finished.

Somehow still hungry, Laura could not resist the Lonely Planet’s praise of Maketu Pies, so we took a detour to the sea side town through dozens of kiwi plantations. Maybe we caught it on a bad day, but the pies were average, at best. But it was pleasant to sit on a quiet bench beside the sea with nowhere in particular be.

On our way up to Hahei, we pulled in to Hot Water beach. At the right tide, you can dig yourself your own personal hot spa on the beach, warmed to 60 degrees Celsius by the hot water from the thermal springs below… But, alas, it was not the right tide. We continued on to Tatahi Lodge and took a walk down to the beach – to confirm our route to Cathedral Cove in the morning – and then spent a while uploading photos and updating our blog before bed.

Overnight we had crossed the international dateline – meaning that the 16th of February lasted all of four hours. Unfortunately my camera didn’t know this – so with all likelihood dates will be confused at some point!

We arrived so early at Auckland airport that there was no gate available, meaning we were sat on the tarmac for almost half an hour. However we got through immigration without issue and at around 8am Laura called Jucy Car Rental who sent a van to collect us and take us to the car depot.

We filled in the paperwork and at Laura’s suggestion I was given a demonstration of how an automatic works! We were on the road just after 9am and the car felt great – even though it was ‘El Cheapo’, it was a much comfier ride than our car at home.

We were headed for Waitomo, but stopped for brunch at 10:30am in Hamilton. We went to Scotts’ Epicurean where I had a tasty Croque Monsieur and Laura had crumpets with strawberry compote, honey and ricotta. Both were great and it felt strange to be back in a bustling town. The coffee was also fantastic – but it turns out this is the case all over New Zealand and Australia!

A wakeboarding competition happened to be in progress on the river near where we had left the car, so we wandered down and watched the likes of Angel Wing (?) competing with some pretty funky stunts. There were also signs for a bikini competition, but sadly we couldn’t linger as we had glow worms to see!

We drove on to Waitomo and arrived just in time to a tour. The caves were fairly sizeable and the guide spent a long time talking about names given to each rocky outcrop – shining her torch at a pile of rubble, “This is called the Elephant”. Any collection of three holes or lumps was praised for it’s ‘uncanny’ resemblance to a face… But the caves themselves and the stalactites and stalagmites were impressive, and were well lit to allow the glow worms to be easily displayed.

One shelf was at eye level allowing you to see the thousands of glowing specks on the rock and the sticky strand they lower down to which they were attempting to lure their prey.

We were then placed in a boat and silently pushed through the cave, gazing at the millions of dots of lights that you couldn’t help but compare to a starry sky.

With plenty of time left in the day and me feeling wide awake and happy to drive, we decided to press on to Taupo where we tried a couple of fully occupied backpacker hostels before ending up at Burke’s Backpackers. The accommodation was very shabby and – with no lock on the door to the bathroom shared with another room – fairly insecure.

We did not have any plans for Taupo, so headed to the recommended Huka Falls and took a short walk over the blue green rapids and to the falls themselves.

We then drove back into town to Lake Taupo and sat on the shore while we tried to find something that we really wanted to see. We settled on the Craters of the Moon geothermal area, but luckily Laura spied it through a gap in the trees and we stopped ourselves before we had to pay – with Rotorua to see the following day, there seemed little point in seeing a merely adequate set of thermal springs!

With that we drove back into town and went to an internet cafe for over 2 hours to upload some pictures and send some messages home. Food seemed to be very expensive in the town, and as we were tired and hardly ravenous, we decided to stop in Burger King. We left so stuffed full and so tired that we almost felt drunk as we staggered our way back to the car and the hostel.

We collapsed into bed at around 10:30pm.