Phew, that's quite a drive- about 10 hours, though we did take the scenic route (deliberatly!) to take in the Waipoua Kauri forest and check out New Zealand's tallest tree (it's big). And the Coromandel Peninsula is totally worth it- a real beautiful stretch of coastline that people often miss out.

Check out the photos- basically it's the sort of place with lovely clifftop walks to secluded bays with turquoise waters and white sandy beaches. The landscape is beautiful- and sometimes rather Scottish (gorse, heather, coos, thistles). The walk to Cathedral Cove is well worth it, passing Gemstone Bay and Stingray Bay - we recommend taking your swim gear and a picnic.

We also went to Hot Water Beach- a beach above hot springs. This means that you can dig into the sand (using a spade hire from the local shop) and hot water will rise and create your own spa pool. Equal parts great and weird.

Mainly it's just a really chilled out and beautiful place where we could have stayed much much longer.

The Coromandel Peninsula will also go down in history as the place where Suzie ate her first ever macaroni cheese, that great Scottish dish. Andrew made sure to make "plenty", though the aim of maybe making 4 portions was somewhat overshot- we ended up with over 10.