I finished my third book!!! I'm on a roll and the pages are flying by, but it's still nothing compared to bob's 14, I think her Kindle is going to melt the rate she burns through them.

We headed on up the east coast of the Coromandel peninsula after breakfast, driving through remote hobbit country with many dairy cows and lots of lush scenery. We stopped in Tairua for coffee and a much needed caramel slice which, with the addition of coconut to the buttery biscuit base was pretty sensational! Technology looked on us favourably and we managed to contact Honeystone House, Brock and Elmgrove which had an added Winston bonus tacked on!

The rugged coastline kept dancing into view as we continued North and eventually we joined the world and his wife in the car park for Hot Water Beach. Jono had prewarned us that it would be a scrum so we gritted out teeth and ignored the crowds striding across the beautiful sand towards the black swarm where the hot water bubbled up from deep below.

We bailed. It was a hideous writhing mass of guidebook followers fighting over patches of warm sand with spades flailing, and bellys bulging and tank tops groaning but I had a plan...

We assumed that as all of the grockles were at hot water beach for low tide we would be free to explore cathedral cove in peace. How wrong we were. After fighting for a parking space underneath a 'you will be towed if you park here' sign we joined the trail of tourists bristling with cameras and slathered in sun cream (though many had forgotten deodorant...) to walk the 2km cliff top path to the legendary Cathedral cove. It was well worth the walk, the bay was beautiful and the huge arch was truly spectacular, but it was swarming with telescopic lenses so we pushed on to the end of the beach and enjoyed our picnic in a small patch of quiet.

On the way back we dropped into stingray bay. It was practically deserted and breathing a sigh of relief we noticed a cool looking cave on the far side of the bay. Bob opted to scramble around to it, whilst I swam. It was a good swim but the cave was a bit of a non-event and we soon turned around. As I emerged from the water, looking almost exactly like Daniel Craig, I felt something move under my feet. At this point my similarity to the James Bond star ended as I shrieked and sprinted out of the water. Looking over my shoulder I saw the huge wing beat of a stingray gliding around, trailing its metre long tail. My involuntary noise and somewhat odd goose-stepping sprint from the surf brought a small group of inquisitive kiwi lads near and they gasped seeing what I had just disturbed. There were now 3 sting rays circling round the shallows, easily visible in the clear water, lunging forwards as the waves broke. We stood and watched them, and their lethal tails for 5 minutes, all agreeing that I had had a very lucky escape!

We returned to the car park and heading up to the small town imaginatively named 'ferry landing' as the Orange glow of the evening set in. We took the water taxi across to Whitianga and strolled around bemoaning our shortsightedness at not booking a table at Salt, an amazing looking restaurant on the harbour side. We were kicked again when the smoothie parlour had run out of icecream for a consolatory milkshake on the dock in the sun so we got the ferry back and trundled back to our campsite at hot water beach. This is where my (bob's) plan came into force. Not only was the campsite reasonably priced, had space and was free of marauding kids, it also had an onsite 'Fush n Chup' shop and we could sneak out to the hot water beach under the cover of darkness!!! I rented a spade...

We made contact to wish John a happy birthday and see if baby Lilly Marie had grown overnight and then I lost my wallet. Naturally I proclaimed that it couldn't possibly be my fault but the loss of all our credit and debit cards, as well as the cash we'd drawn out the day before, driving licenses and the wallet itself did start to weigh on my mind...

When it appeared that running round sqwaking was going to do little to find it I took Bob's tight lipped advice and wrote some polite notices to put around the place explaining just how deep the excrement would be for me if I didn't find it in the next 10 hours... It was while I was sticking these notices up, white and trembling (too afraid to go back to the car) that I bumped into the night porter who, with a grin, produced my wallet, having found it on our skyping bench, and picked it up for safe keeping. Blissful relief!

I skipped back to the car where Bob was reading and told her the good news before celebrating by taking my rental spade for a 1am trip to the beach.

The moonlight illuminated an odd scene. A large beach fire surrounded by 20 GapYahs, a few loners like me and 3 middle aged German men in speedos. The surf was crashing on the majority of these hardcore few as they softshoe shuffled through the waves, like a kiwi uses its beak, sensing for the hot springs with their toes. It wasn't long before there was a whoop from one of the Germans, followed by a furious amount of spade activity and 3 speedoed backsides plopped into the dark pool, shrieking and mini-fist pumping. They continued developing their pool, looking like 3 gollums digging around for Sauron's ring amongst the waves, and the GapYah's joined the party. I found an equally warm spot suitably far away and was joined by 2 other girlfriendless loners and we made a tepid paddling pool before nodding to each other, pleased with our handiwork and dissipated into the night.

I got back around 2am, sodden, and with the munchies so prepared a midnight feast of Nutella on toast for myself and a very confused, sleepy Boblet. I managed to remove most of the beach and lay back thinking just how odd the evening had been.