January 19th

Our bus picked us up from the main street to take us out to the Coromandel Peninsula. Our driver was Eric. On our way out of the city the bus took us up to the top of Mount Eden, an extinct volcano, to get a good view of the city. We stopped briefly at a bay in the firth of Thames to take a picture. We went to a supermarket in Thames to get some lunch. We drove throught the town of Tairua which is all posh holiday homes. We couldn't go to Hot Water Beach as the sea was very rough and it was high tide. The swell on the sea was huge. We drove to Cathedral Cove and had quite a strenuous half an hour walk each way to the beach and back. I can't say it was really worth the walk! It was a big hole in the rock but not that impressive! The walk was a shock to the system after being stuck in a bus for hours! We got the little ferry across from Ferry Landing to Whitianga to get some fresh air and met the bus on the other side. Our hostel was 'On the beach backpackers', a quarter of an hour walk out of the town. We were in a 12 bed mixed dorm. Wegot a lift to and from the supermarket from the hostel owners who were really nice. We made dinner then faffed around writing our journals and watching a bit of TV before going to bed.

January 20th

We got up and walked into town. We went to the bine carving shop and spent the morning carving our own pendants out of pieces of cow bone. It was suprisingly satisfying to have one that you'd made yourself rather than just bought in a shop. We went to a cafe for toasted sandwiches and smoothis for lunch. We looked round all the shops and then went back to our hostel. It started to POUR with rain, but being English and not fazed by this we donned our waterproof coats and headed back into town in the evening to go to the little cinema. We got absloutely SOAKED! We went to see a new English comedy called 'Death at a Funeral'. It was ver funny but it's odd watching an English film in a foreign country as other people were laughing at things people said that to us our just normal things to say! For dinner we shared a pizza and had a glass of the local Coromandel chardonnay. We walked back to the hostel and I spent a while on the phone home. Then we had tea and went to bed.

January 21st

We woke up this morning to POURING rain and HUGE gales! We had managed to find ourselves at a seaside destination in the front line of a big tropical cyclone!! Bummer! This meant there was basically nothing to do. We spent most of the day writing our journals, listening to music and going on the internet! We braved the weather once to go to a grocery shop about ten minutes walk away to get something to cook for dinner. We spent the afternoon and evening watching silly TV (Kiwi version of Ground Force!!) and talking to some other English girls, swapping advice about where we'd been and where they'd been as we're doing almost the same round the world thing but in the opposite direction. We played cards with them and an American girl. This hostel had a really nice friendly atmosphere. We went and packed up our bags and went to bad.