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.
