Wednesday- Cathedral Cove

It was so nice to have another lay in this morning and it looked like it had rained over night so hopefully the rest of the day would stay nice and dry although it was a bit overcast. We stopped off at the general store to pick up a few bits for lunch and a new cookie time breakfast cookie...yum! We then headed to Cathedral Cove, you can't drive there so parked on the edge of the marine reserve and take the 40 minute coastal walk. Along the way we had the opportunity to stop off at several bays. The first was Gemstone bay where Mark decided he needed to go a toilet...surprise surprise! He ended up heading into the bushes for 10minutes. Coming back be was covered in thorns and scratches and fell in the process coming back minus a pair of pants...where does this story seem familiar from? Needless to say Mark had a more comfortable walk after that. We then headed to Stingray bay and Mares leg cove. After about 40 minutes of following the scenic contoured walk, we finally arrived in Cathedral cove (Te Whanganui a hei) It was really cool and I was determined to get the classic picture of us in front with the sun shining and the ocean looking spectacularly blue, this was not to happen. The sun still hadn't quite broke through the clouds and neither of us was prepared to take on the cold morning ocean...such babies! So we took a bunch of photos, walked around the cave and chilled on the beach, the sun was not coming out anytime soon so we decided to skip our beach day and walked back. We took a detour back to see a little more of the reserve. With most of the day ahead to Coromandel Town, On your way up route 25 we stopped off along the Whitianga Harbour for a spot of lunch. The drive into Coromandel town was really scenic, you can see the bay, ocean and Whanganui island. We took a few more snaps. We also saw lots of road kill, a few times we saw beautiful hawks on the side of the road feeding on the road kill. When we arrived the plan was to stay here the night however it was quite a small town and after a quick Chai Latte and not finding the 'Waterworks' water park we decided to head to the next town down the west of the peninsula and hopefully make the most of our last day tomorrow. So we Mark and I continued our drive down to Thame and good job we did, as we drove out of town we saw the signs for Waterworks...'NZ' best theme park'...we had to check it out.

We took the gravel track for about 4km and arrived at 'The Waterworks' It was so much fun, there were lots of fun interactive contraptions that were made out of recycled materials involving water, a swimming hole, playground and a flying fox....that I chickened out of at the last minute. It was a good way of wasting a few hours. I'm sure we were the only ones in the park. The Hamster wheel was brilliant.

It was a great end to the day and we still had enough time to drive down to Thames, have dinner at the brain boro hotel and find accommodation for the night. The hostel like most of the town was built in the mining boom, alot of buildings built circa 1800s and made of Kauri. It was a beautiful place with high ceilings and colonal characteristics.

The thames had good canyoning activities on which we would have liked to done hand we not had a deadline tomorrow.