25th February A Rainy Day Adventure

Overnight I was fully expecting a deluge as the forecast was an 80% probability of rain. However, it stayed dry until about 10am just as we were contemplating on our day's plan and the fillings for today's sandwiches were being discussed (in case you're interested a selection of ham or cheese and 'marmite' were made).

With a high degree of certainty that we'd get wet if we went on a walk we opted for a road trip. Now if you imagine the north coast of North Island looking like a V we were heading up the right side. As with most of NZ there is a coast road around the peninsula but only a few roads taking you across the middle from the east to west coast. These tend to be the untarmaced gravel ones. If we'd kept to the main tarmaced roads our circular trip from Hot Water Beach to Coromandel would have been about half an hour longer and nearly 40 miles longer. With fuel stations being a bit of a rarity up this part, as there are literally no towns, anything to save fuel is an advantage. So off we went!

Our trip had us slowing for a family of Pukeko birds crossing the road in front of us - the chicks we reckon should be called peeps as this was the noise they made. Very cute fluffy balls on long legs with very big feet.

This is George in Coromandel Town after our short cut (lots of mountainous, windy roads through the rainforests with muddy puddles) and about an hour of heavy rain - just imagine what it would've looked like if it hadn't rained 😄.

This sign made me smile.

This would work. A doughnut is always likely to get me moving quicker than a carrot 😄.

We managed to explore Coromandel Town, have an outdoor coffee and our picnic and potter around the town in the dry. Then we started our return trip taking us back across the peninsula, but this time on a state highway, to Whitianga.

We had a stop in Whitianga to check out the foot passenger ferry for tomorrow's outing. As it was late Sunday afternoon much of the town was closing and then we had lightening flashing and thunder rumbling so it wasn't really a good afternoon to look around. Hopefully we'll get a better chance on a Monday morning.

Back to our chalet Ian cleaned George in the drizzle. 

Then it was time for Ian's haircut sitting outside the chalet in his swimming Speedos. Going for a shorter style in the heat. I don't think we'll be seeing the same sight (Ian sitting outside the house in Kent) when we get back!

Fingers crossed for a bit of a drier day tomorrow as we explore a bit closer to where we are. Hopefully we'll get our hot water springs beach pool dug as well.