None of the Above (Auckland, New Zealand)

Ah, civilisation, well, a reliable internet connection dear reader. It makes all the difference. 

We left Coro around 8:15am. While not raining, the day did not look particularly promising. The low cloud was obscuring any colour the surrounding waterways might reflect, making photography redundant. On a sunny day, from any lookout on the Coromandel Peninsula, the views are magic and the colours in the water breath taking shades of blue.

Courtesy of aoteabandb.co.nz

But not today, so we commenced the 54km sinuous journey back to Thames where we thought we would stop for coffee and petrol. The drive was remarkably uneventful, no blue Corolla this time. The drive was around an hour and we parked in the main street in search of a café.

The main street in Thames is extremely long. I think we walked about half of it and there is a café every 10 other shops. No really. Making the decision where to stop really problematic. In the end, tired of walking, we stumbled across, Food for Thought Café. Impressed by the name and the awards for their home made pies displayed in the window, we stopped there. The coffee, again, proved to be good. I have not had a bad coffee since we arrived. The pie too was a winner. A great, if by chance, choice for a stop.

There was not a lot of action between Thames and Auckland, mostly highway driving. We arrived late morning, checked in, left the car and the bags and went exploring. The waterfront is under serious reconstruction and there are pedestrian redirections everywhere. Undeterred, we continued and found another great place for coffee in the Britomart area. Then continued our walk down to Queen's Wharf, picked up a few tourist brochures and pushed on to the Prince's Wharf and Viaduct and the Wynyard precinct. We stopped to watch the bridge being raised to allow yachts in and out.

I think this is the defender.

So, one of the wharves we wandered across is the home for the America's Cup 2021 challenge. You read more here, if you are interested. I'm not. I didn't even know NZ had the cup. The challenger isn't even American. I mean, really. Anyway, the Kiwis seem pretty keen. Apparently they like accruing world cups, you know, rugby and stuff. A pity about the cricket. Bahahahahaha!

Anyway, they have built a special base from which to defend the cup. And it's a nice walk on a sunny day and at the end there are bars and restaurants. At least that is interesting.

The before picture

Of course, if you are admiring the scenery and enjoying the walk and the weather, one should keep alert for poles and sirens. We saw a guy walk straight into a pole on the wharf while his eyes were fastened on some floating bank loan. He was a solid guy and it knocked him flat, broke his sun glasses and cut his head. People, including us, came from everywhere to assist him. Then there is siren danger, especially on a bridge that opens. It means that you should hurry along. Apparently. Well, I didn't know. Once safely on the other side we watched the bridge go up and millions of dollars float past.

And after. I'm  not sure I can afford to even look at that boat

The boat in the above picture is named Janice of Wyoming. I would like to see her sailed all the way home. US geography is not my area of specialisation, but I always believed Wyoming was the mid-west. One of the states that figured heavily in the westerns of my childhood. It doesn't spring to mind as a home for sailors. I'd love to see a future America's Cup challenge there. I think anyone from Darwin might have a tactical edge. An obscure reference, yes my dear reader, it might be time for some research. Todd River regatta should help there.

Dinner tonight was at Vivacé. Sorry, I'm not a huge fan of photographing food. Well, on occasion, if I remember. Regardless, we found this place by accident, but you should look it up. Awesome. great tapas menu, hot and cold, as well as main meals. Great wine list, fantastic  service. What more do you want? Book here.

Another day over. Tomorrow, Wine Island. That's the stuff dreams are made of ... well my dreams, even if the sentence finishes with a preposition.

The title? Well, I had nothing, restricted by the desire to use only NZ songs, so I went random ... None of the Above is from the 2005 Shihad album Love is the New Hate. Great album title.

Until then.

My Mistake (Coromandel, Hobbiton, New Zealand)

Did you miss me dear reader? We have ventured into Zombieland. Well, not really, but we did drive past it leaving Rotorua this morning. It exists. Here is the link. Coromandel may not be zombie land but it almost the end of the earth and internet access is very patchy, to the extent that this post was written in Word before being dropped into Blogspot. I am not even sure when it will be uploaded – possibly not until we are ensconced in Auckland.

I have resisted the urge to make jokes about rotten egg gas and the sulphur smell that has contributed to the legend that is Rotorua. The reason? It hasn’t been that noticeable. It was quite pervasive on the way into town, but we were driving past a geothermal pool and geyser. It was also very strong at the park where we found the boiling lake and bubbling mud. Beyond that, it’s like trying to remember something, and it just keeps to back of your mind, just out of reach. It’s a shadow that is always with you.

That was until this morning. My scratchy, raspy throat that I have attributed to the bushfires and terrible atmosphere in Sydney before we left, was worse today than it’s been. I woke early and the first thing I noticed was the sulphur smell. It was extremely pungent. The shadow had morphed into a ring wraith and it had its hands around my throat. Whether the sulphurous air made my throat worse, who knows? It is not something you can avoid but today I had no tolerance for it and couldn’t get out of Rotorua quickly enough. Yes quickly dear reader, an adverb, I know, an Australian who knows how to use an adverb!

To avoid the demonic GPS leading me astray, I actually researched the route to Hobbiton. Obviously, she was aware of this and so there was no attempt to steer us from the most direct route.

On the drive to Coromandel (Coro to the locals) I saw a sign for a “working gold mine”. I quipped that we had just left a working gold mine at Hobbiton. I am getting ahead of myself.

 The intention was to just rock up at 501 Buckland Road, Hinuera, aka Hobbiton, but one brochure suggested bookings were essential. Online I checked out what was available. Tours were leaving roughly every 10 minutes. There were 20 adults in our group, plus the kids, one of whom had the most ridiculous haircut ever seen. A sort of landing strip, long at the sides and crew cut down the centre. On a 10 year old girl. Her sister had the entire left side of her head shaved. Fashion would have been a great title today except I’m staying with Kiwi musicians to provide inspiration.

No-one home. The Bagginses are out on adventure

 I digress. So, yeah, 20 adults x $84 for a 2 hour tour = $1680 plus the kids' entry fee (at least Gilligan’s crowd got a three hour tour). And there were larger groups than ours. Each group moved with clockwork precision around Hobbiton finishing at the Green Dragon for, in my case, a breakfast beer.  I don't think I've done that since I was 18. I was glad I wasn’t on the 8am tour. We were scheduled to commence at 10:10am but arrived early so we were bumped up to the 9:40am tour – so clearly, they do keep places for walk-ins.

Bilbo's pipe and book

 While I’ve read the books and seen the movies, except for the Hobbit movie, I’m not a die hard fan. It was interesting seeing Hobbiton and it will be even more so when I sit down to watch The Lord of the Rings again. The money they spend to keep Hobbiton looking like the movie set must be astronomical. The flower beds, vegie gardens, hedges and grasses that need to be tended to be forever in summer take a lot of intensive work.

I neglected to state that all tours are guided tours. There is a car park and then you join a tour and are transported by bus to the start of the tour. You are also returned to the same spot, where, if you have unlimited spending power, you can waste your money in the gift shop. No really. These guys have price gouging down to an art form. Despite having a Tolkien addicted child, we could not justify paying what they were asking for things we could probably buy cheaper elsewhere. Not that we looked, sorry Dave.

The video that was played on the bus ride into Hobbiton features Sir Peter Jackson, movie director, talking about finding the perfect set location while reconnoitring the area in a helicopter. He espied the farm owned by the Alexander family and, after some negotiation, the earth movers rolled in to create Hobbiton in the middle of the property. The place remains a working farm and Hobbiton was deconstructed following Lord of the Rings. After the Hobbit Trilogy was made, the permanent sets that had been constructed were preserved rather than being abandoned again and Farmer Alexander and Sir Peter formed a business partnership that is now the “working goldmine”. Farmer Alexander could quite comfortably live off this small portion of his agricultural land holding and treat the real farm like a hobby.

And then it was back on the road to Coromandel. It is a very long and very winding road that leads to our door. It was etched out of the rock that is the peninsula and wound around the coast like a string. In a typically NZ way there were sections of unrestricted speed limit, with no speed sign corner posts – some of which needed to be taken at around 30 km p/h or less.

That was not the challenge. No. Other drivers, who should never have been issued with a driver’s license, were the challenge. It was 54km of snaking road that needed to be negotiated before we reached our destination. In all seriousness I could write a separate post about the guy in the blue Corolla that we followed for the first 20kms. OMG.

We arrived in Coro a tad early and went to spec out the town. That took all of five minutes. It is a testament to urban geography and ribbon development. The shops stretch the length of two blocks on the main road. It has everything required, 3 pubs, numerous cafés, a supermarket, a local craft market, 2 bottle shops and a number of ‘gift’ shops where the tourists can support the local economy and buy stuff they don't need and will later wonder why they bought it.

The only sustenance I'd had so far was my glass of stout at the conclusion of the Hobbiton tour, so we set about finding something to eat. Coro pies (sorry, no website). Slightly off the main street, selling from a semi-industrial unit, Coro Pies is worth discovering. There are a few picnic tables out front where you can sit to enjoy their wares. The range of pies is a bigger number than the local population. And very tasty they were. It was the best pie I’ve had in a very long time.

Our accommodation in Coro is a miner’s cottage in the garden of Quail Cottage, not far from town. It is walkable if the weather is agreeable. It’s a quaint, rustic little place with a comfortable verandah from which to watch the local bird population come and go. A very pleasant place to while away the afternoon. The bathroom is separate from the cottage, only about 5 metres, but not for the feint-hearted in winter I should imagine.

There is no reason for this photo to be here, but here it is anyway.

 Shane, our host, showed us around and explained the idiosyncrasies of the place. The yard is quite large with a number of different fruit trees. Whisky, the indolent black cat, is the only other permanent resident. Care should be taken when driving in or out of the residence. Whisky likes to lie in the middle of the drive and is not easily encouraged to move.

Rather than fussing about dinner, we opted for cheese, salami, peanuts, crisps and a bottle of chardonnay on the verandah and watched the sun move slowly across the sky. Very pleasant and very relaxing.

We were woken around 4am by a most unfamiliar sound. In fact, I wasn’t sure what was happening. Is that rain? No, the wind is picking up. No. It was rain. Reasonably heavy too and it continued through till around 7am. It was still misty when we headed into town for breakfast, the planned walk postponed in favour of the car. The Weta Café is recommended (again, no web site). Great coffee and a really interesting menu that goes beyond the usual fixation with eggs.

See previous caption. Afraid of heights? Me?

 The weather has kept us close to home and although we had intended Coro to be downtime, the rain has ensured that will definitely happen. The cloud never left the mountain top and occasionally, without warning, came down the mountain just to surprise. We ventured as far as Coro for fish and chips for lunch – the bottom shop is the better option. And just managed to stay dry. While in town we saw the dreaded blue Corolla that haunted and taunted me on the drive on yesterday.

Yes, my inquisitive reader, of course we staked it out to see who was driving. All I remember from yesterday is grey hair (not that there is anything wrong with that). We were enjoying our lunch and fending off the sparrows. Don’t laugh, they were seriously aggressive and arrived in number. I made several air swipes to send them away to no avail. They did finally decide there were easier targets when I connected with one. All the while we were watching the Corolla.

Then it happened. They arrived. I had been speculating about which grey haired man would get behind the wheel. I was wrong. She had grey hair and he a bad dye job. They got into the car and wasted 5 minutes playing with the GPS. Glasses on, glasses off, Karate Kid style, check notes. Adjust. Discuss. Repeat. I am amazed they made it to Coro. Then, blinker on she carefully moved the car onto the road and then stopped to do a U-turn. OMFG. I will have nightmares forever.

The weather continued to be capricious, so we made the most of the afternoon and alternated our time from inside the bach to the verandah and enjoyed some of New Zealand’s finest grape products.

You've made it to the end of a marathon post my persistent reader. Well done. The title? Well, a classic number form Split Enz to reflect the fact that Coromandel may well be for locals, but the time and effort required when you are touring was not, in my opinion, commensurate with the reward. My choice, my mistake.

Tomorrow is Auckland. City life. A strong internet connection and a change of scenery.

Until then.