North to Coromandel town, a bigger place than Tapu, but still a quiet sleepy little place. There was however an extremely disturbing noise from a bible-bashing god-squad busker who seemed determined to obliterate the tranquillity with his warbling about how great some geezer called Jesus was!! We headed for the sanctuary of the internet café at a nearby pub, and then headed round to Long Bay, just a couple of miles from town. The road ends abruptly at a beautiful campsite on the bay, surrounded by native bush land. There was a posse of very dodgy looking Kiwi scallies parked next to our site, but they soon cleared off and left us in peace. We took a superb little walk around the headland to the next bay, where the same management ran a more basic campsite for tents only with very limited facilities, but once again in the most gorgeous location. After the walk we had a pretty chilled day just relaxing around the bay and nursing Hel’s cold.

The drive over to the other side of the peninsula the next day was superb, with some stunning scenery. The Coromandel is another area like Northland where there was large scale destruction of the native forests by Europeans, but where small pockets still remain. Nevertheless what’s left is still very beautiful and will hopefully one day return to something like it’s former glory. We’d had a short stop in Whitianga, as it had the cheapest campsites on the East coast, but we decided that we’d pay the few dollars more to stay at the Top Ten campsite at Hahei. Hahei is the nearest place to the two attractions which interested us, Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. Top Ten Campsites tend to be very touristy, very well equipped, and a fair bit more expensive, but this one wasn’t so bad on all accounts. First up was the walk to Cathedral Cove. The walk along the cliff tops was pretty nice - great views out to sea of the offshore islands, and all round pretty good weather again. Cathedral Cove