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Tuesday morning as we were getting ready to leave, the fire alarm in the hotel went off.
It turned out to be a false alarm, but they sent 4 or 5 fire trucks to the scene. We ended up not leaving
the hotel until almost 11:15am, on our way to Thames and the Coromandel Peninsula.
The drive to Thames only takes about 1 hour, 15 minutes. We arrived in this small town of about
7000 people around 12:30. There's one main drag where we stopped in the visitor's center. I grabbed a
map of the Coromandel park and then we went to a cafe for lunch. It turns out it was a vegetarian cafe,
and I was conscious of the fact that I was the only male in the restaurant, but the food was pretty good,
if not all that filling.
Hills on the way to Coromandel
Sheep on the hillside
After lunch we started the long winding drive to Coromandel township. It's a beautiful drive,
starting with a section right on the water's edge, the water being the Hauraki Gulf, east of Auckland.
The road then turns inland, up over rolling green hills. There are some fantastic views of Manaia Harbour and
the gulf, as well as views of lots of sheep and cows on the hillsides.
Hills on the way to Coromandel
Coromandel is a very small town, with a main drag of only 3 or 4 blocks. I stopped at the
information center where I saw a couple from our dinner table in Rotorua. Small country. We walked along
the main drag, visiting some gift shops. There's really not much to see here, though, and the town was a bit
of a disappointment.
Looking back at the water
It was getting late in the day and we had a long drive back, so we started back early. We stopped
in Thames and had fish and chips for dinner. We then drove back to Auckland early so we could get a head start
packing for the next leg of our trip, the Nelson area on the South Island.
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