Coromandel

On Friday, May 19th, me and three friends (Lisa - the au pair of my child's best friends, Susanne and Isabella - both of them attended the orientation days with Lisa) went to the Coromandel Peninsula. Since we left quite late on Friday, it was already pitch dark when we arrived at the hostel.
There, we didn't do much but went to bed soon after. On the next morning, we got up relatively early because we still had to go to the supermarket to buy food. Back at the hostel, we had breakfast, got ready, and then drove to Coromandel Town. Unfortunately, we had some bad luck with the weather on Saturday - it rained almost the whole day. Nevertheless, we could see quite a lot. On the way to Coromandel Town, we stopped at the Waiau Falls. A relatively small and hidden, but incredibly beautiful waterfall. In summer, you could definitely go swimming there, but now in winter, it's unfortunately too cold for that.
After that, we continued on the poorly built and dangerous road (we met a couple whose car was hanging off the cliff) to Coromandel Town. On the way there, we came across cute pigs, they naturally had the right of way :-D
In Coromandel Town, there was unfortunately not much to see and it was pouring rain, so we were only there for a few minutes. The next stop was New Chums Beach - one of the most beautiful beaches on the Coromandel Peninsula. Even in the rain, the beach was really beautiful and it must be heavenly there in the summer! At New Chums Beach, we took a little coffee break - until the rain started again. Then we went on to a beautiful picnic spot on the coast, where we all had our lunch (unfortunately in the car because of the weather, but well).
Otherwise, on Saturday we only went to one beach (Otama Beach) and one bay (Opito Bay). If the weather had been better, we could have probably spent more time there, but it was really unfortunate with the rain.
At the hostel, we borrowed a DVD (Pirates of the Caribbean :-)), cooked dinner, and then went to bed soon after, because we wanted to get up very early the next morning to watch the sunrise.
Around 4:15 am, our alarm clock rang, we had breakfast and then headed to Cathedral Cove in the darkness and cold. This is a very famous bay on the Coromandel Peninsula with incredibly beautiful rock formations. From the parking lot, it was a good walk to Cathedral Cove - a bit of morning exercise. :-)
Luckily, the weather on Sunday was much better than on Saturday. That's why we could see the sunrise perfectly and it looked really beautiful - it was absolutely worth getting up so early!
After we made it back to the car after the challenging walk back up, we drove on to Hot Water Beach. There we dug a hole from which hot water came out, and we sat in it and relaxed for a while. Eventually, the tide came in and we had to go back to the car and continue driving.
After Hot Water Beach, we more or less started our way back home. On the way, we stopped at a beautiful waterfall (Owharoa Falls), in a small village for a coffee and a snack, and at the huge L&P bottle in Paeroa, where I had already been on the way back from Tauranga.
In the evening, we finally arrived back in Auckland after a long day.
All in all, it was a really nice weekend in Coromandel, only the rain on Saturday was a bit annoying. However, in summer, you could spend so much more time there - at all the beautiful beaches or you could go kayaking and so on... Nevertheless, it was a nice weekend :-)