Coromandel is a place that we weren't going to go to but just decided that as a few people had recommended it to us we could find the time to head there. It's a jut of land that sits up on the east coast of the north island and not that many people live there, the biggest town in the whole place probably only has about 10,000 people living there. It's mainly used as a holidaying area for Aucklanders due to it being near Auckland (which helps) and the fact that it has some very nice beaches.

And it is on the beaches that we spent our first day in the area, first going to an absolutely deserted beach for a few hours that was probably the best one we have seen in New Zealand. I (Stuart) loved it because there were big waves and it gave me the chance to go charging into them as though I were ten years old again. Great fun. Rhiannon retained her dignity sunbathing and occaisionally looking up to laugh at the immature buffoon she has found herself lumbered with halfway around the world.

Back in the van we headed further up the coast for more beachy fun. There is a beach up here called Hot Sandy Beach where at low tide you can dig your own pool which then fills up with hot water from the thermals underneath. Sounds great but we didn't do it because low tide was quite late (8ish) and it had clouded over by then and begun to rain.

Yes the rain was back and lasted for quite a while and certainly for the next day or two that we were in the general vicinity. Braving it we drove onto the town of Coromandel, a former gold mining town but now just a sleepy town relying on past glories to draw the tourists in. To get there we perhaps unwisely took a short cut down a 30km gravel road which the Lonely Planet said was well maintained but in actually fact was not and it was nearly an hour of slow driving up windy hilly roads with massive puddles in them due to the downpour. Still we must have shaved 30 minutes off our traveling time(!) and didn't damage the van so another victory for the "it'll be alright" school of thought.

Coromandel actually looked quite nice when we got there and we stayed a few hours before heading off to run away unnsuccessfully from the bad weather.

We were going to stay in Thames further down (we are exiting the penninsula post-haste by now) but it is an absolute sh!t hole (sorry mum) so if you ever get the chance to go there, I wouldn't. So we drove on with me driving slowly and annoying other road users as the high winds caused the van to swing unexpectedly across the lane which must have made me look like a prime candidate to be pulled over. Obviously we arrived safely at a beach resort which strangely had a terrible beach, we would have moved on but it was getting late so just went and got some beers from the shop and settled in for the night as the next morning we would drive north again past Auckland and towards the Bay of Islands and our last stop with the van (only four campervanning days left!).