Took forever to get this up! But look, my blog post about the Coromandel is finally up.
This was a very last minute trip, I emailed our work liaison and told her we preferred a weekday getaway and didn't care where. We were in luck as the only bach left was in Hahei, Coromandel. I cost us $30 per night only. We stayed for two nights because I needed to be back in Auckland on Wednesday for clinical education.
The day started off with an adrenaline rush. My newly bought iPhone for some reason died on me. It was completely charged but it still shut off for some reason. I plugged it in and panicked until it turned back on. I still don't know why it did that and to be honest, I didn't research very hard about it. I had to use my iPad to message my friend about being late! Eventually we were on our way.
Made a pit stop in Thames for lunch. What did we have? McDonald's. Because McDonald's never disappoints? I don't know. But New Zealand McDonald's recently started doing Kit Kat McFlurry and these things never really last long so I pounced on it this chance.
Finally arrived at our destination in Hahei and took a selfie in the backyard! =P And because I realised nothing is going to save you from looking at my ugly face, I piled on a billion layers of filters.
How the system works. Jokes. There's a local guy who takes care of the house.
This was my room and it's really messy as I just moved everything from my car into the room. Say hello to my Pooh bedding, that scarf from Superette I bought so they could match my shoes from Bambi. At this point, they hadn't yet arrived and I was pissed off at NZSale about it.
The is the other room. In total, there are beds for six but there's options to add more people - sleeping bags, tents, fold out sofas. I wouldn't though. The facilities here would probably suit four people at the most if you want to have a comfortable vacation.
The dining area and the exit to the outside world. The only time I really eat chips: when I'm on vacation. I didn't even know this was available.
After dumping all our shit from the car into the bach, we changed into our gear and headed down to Hahei Beach. It looked absolutely fantastic! We applied a shitton of sunscreen.
Another shot of Hahei.
Why the rush? Because we were booked in for a 1:30pm kayaking experience. It cost about $100 nz per person and while it sounds ridiculously expensive for three hours, I regret nothing!
We stopped in Cathedral Cove for selfies and pics.
Absolutely phenomenal.
We took a short walk across the beach to see the great sights.
I felt like this picture was really awkward because we wanted to have a nice picture of the view behind us so we over concentrated on getting that captured. That rock: one of the most photographed rocks in New Zealand. Probably. Then we gave up and got someone else to take a picture of us.
Channeling some Castaway moments.
Had a bit of a tea break while we were there before we jumped back into the water and continued our kayaking experience.
Why hello.
Then we headed to Hot Water Beach!
After our kayaking, we went to the hot water beach. It wasn't close to low tide so we couldn't experience it to the fullest but great walk anyway.
But great opportunity for selfies.
My attempt at something artistic just taking pics of the tide coming and going, running over my feet.
Hot Water Beach
For dinner, we made the trip to Whitianga, just under a half hour drive away.
My friend had the fish and potato salad.
While I had the mussel pot with fries.
For dessert she had the passion fruit panna cotta. It fell short though. Wasn't quite passion fruit. Wasn't quite panna cotta.
And I had the amaretto affogato with sugared almonds. I wish I asked them to withhold the liqueur as it was much too strong for me. But the sugared almonds were absolutely delicious.
Day 2, Coromandel (the town)
This is the sunrise the next morning. I failed to wake for this but my friend didn't.
She saw a rabbit.
My friend told me I needed to visit Coromandel for their oysters. So we made the long drive across for this. Unfortunately they only had the standard sizing. The large ones were much more delicious.
She also recommended the fish and chips. I don't really care much about the chips but the fish was amazing! This was flounder.
Here's our view as we munched on oysters and fish and chips.
We walked around in Coromandel before driving back to the bach. We weren't really interested in doing any of the other activities there.
When we got back though, we went to Cooks Beach for some scenery.
Woah.
I
Tried to take a selfie with some sort of background but it was hard.
So I just took selfies.
Another one.
These are mathematically derived step pattern steps lol
So stopped by Lonely Bay while we were there.
Final Day, our return trip.
Last day at coromandel started with breakfast at the local cafe followed by a visit to the macadamia nut farm. I love macadamia but have not had other macadamia products until now.
Macadamia tree growing for the next picking.
Before heading back to Auckland, I stopped by Coromandel to pick up some oysters to bring back to Auckland.
On the way back to Auckland, just as we entered into greater Auckland, the interior bit of the wheel of my car popped! we were very lucky it didn't fully go flat especially at the speed we were going at on the motorway as it would have caused an accident!
I loved this impromptu trip to Coromandel and would love to go again sometime soon
