On the way to Coromandel town we stopped in one of the bigger towns called Whitianga where we had intended on spending the night so that we could get a warrent of fitness (WOF) done on the van. Unfortunately, no one in town did them so there wasn't really alot of point in hanging around because we wanted to get to Coromandel town for Christmas. Before we left we went to a place called Bay Carving where you can make your own necklace from bone carving. We started by being given a piece of bone which looked similar to the finished carving but the edges were square and it was very dull. It was possible to make your own carving from scratch but i think it would have looked terrible by the time we had finished!! I chose a fish hook and Neil chose a Patu which is a symbol of a weapon used by Maori warriors. We started off by using a drill to carve away a piece of bone that needed to come out. Then with a thicker drill we rounded off all of the edges. Next we moved onto a desk where we had to sand all of the bone down, for this we used a vice to get to all of the edges smooth. Once the tutor was satisfied, we had to go and wet sand the carving which made it even smoother. Once it was dry we rubbed it until our fingers hurt with a little bit of brasso and then it was put onto a piece of string to make a necklace. The whole process took about 2 hours but it was fun!

From Whitianga we drove onto Coromandel town which was about an hour away. We found a really nice campsite called Tide Water Tourist Park. Really, it's a backpackers with a motel but there was a really nice garden out the back with an awsome view over the sea and it was blue because the sun was out. Wohoo!