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April 7 - Brook - Today was our sightseeing day with the DG Allen Eyes and his family. We first went to Whitianga on a small ferry over an estuary. Once in the booming vacation town we quickly found the market and had a chance to roam around. From there we toured the town a bit then headed up to Otama and Opito Beaches on the coromandel. It was a rather overcast day but as we drove it started to rain a bit… then a bit more. The roads over the coromandel mountains were rather windy, single lane, and unpaved and thankfully for once it was not me that got a tad green in the back seat. By the time we arrived at Opito beach the weather had dried up a bit. We decided to have our picnic lunch at the beach and hope the rain stayed away. I had a lovely time in the fresh air but unfortunately the rain returned and Allen and Claire were more upset by this than any of us. We had a yummy lunch with a lovely banana and carrot cake that Claire had made for us (with some chocolate Easter eggs for the drive). After leaving Kuaotuna we headed for coromandel town. We went straight to the Driving Creek Railway & potteries. The DCR is a handmade narrow gauge railway that was initially made to bring clay and wood down the hills and mountain to the pottery. In the last 36 years it has grown into one of the "worlds most scenic railways" and has recently carried it's 1 millionth passenger. The track is only 3.6 km long but full of lovely scenery and interesting engineering, including wine bottle retaining walls, terra cotta tunnels, double-decker bridges. At the end of the line we were able to get out and climb up to a lookout called the "Eye-full tower". At the end of the experience we were all very happy to stop in at the Driving Creek Café and enjoy some of New Zealand's finest coffee's.
Then we headed back to Whitianga and had dinner at a takeaway that was once voted "New Zealand's best fish and chips" The group had snapper and tarakihi fish with kumura and regular fries and ice cream for dessert. We enjoyed a lovely day and a true kiwi experience!
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