This is a bit of catching up. Tonight, with one full day left in New Zealand, we realized that we have stayed in 18 places in less than 7 weeks That’s a lot of moving around, and we’re feeling it. So this post is about everything between Matamata (a little bit before, truth be told), and Auckland.
One of the things we did on our way to Matamata was stop at some of the geothermal fields on the north island. Pretty impressive as you can see from the photos.
You really get the sense of being on a volcanic island. 
This one was called the Devil’s Throat. 
A little on the warm side.
Fast forward to the day after Hobbiton, and we find ourselves in Cook’s Beach in Coromandel. I think Tom and I both agree that the Coromandel is one of the places where we could have spent a little more time. It was this stage of the trip that we planned on have more “vacation” than “adventure” and for the most part that was what we did.
Part of the Coromandel experience is Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a hole on the beach and create your own mini-hot tub—if you can find the exact right spot. You can only do this during the +/-2 hours before and after low tide, which on our day there was from about 6-10 am. We got there around 8:30 am, which was a little late, and most of the really good spots were taken. What you have to do is walk along the beach, dig your toes into the sand to find a place that is warm, but not too hot. Well, we ended up in a spot that was used as the example of WAY too hot, and tried—with very limited success—to temper it with the cooler sea water. We don’t consider it a failure, because it was still a beautiful beach.
We took a short detour to Hahei Beach with a view of Cathedral Cove, before we decided to just spend a little time at Cook’s Beach itself, which we had to ourselves.
A view of Cathedral Cove. 
Hahei Beach was really impressive. 
Our only companion on Cooks Beach.
The next day was one of our longer drives, all the way up to Paihia, on the Bay of Islands. If I haven’t done it already, I have to give a ton of credit for the whole trip to Tom, who did all of the driving. Okay, I did a short stint (and it was fine) while he napped. Except he didn’t really nap and it lasted all of 20 minutes. We’ll do a follow up post on NZ roads and you’ll see why.
Anyway, after a quick night in Paihia, we head up north to Ahipara. Now, when we planned this trip, we knew we would end the trip in Auckland, but wanted a bit of a “wind down” with some time on a beach after all the moving around. After a lot of research, I found a really great beachfront AirBNB in Ahipara.
The view was amazing. Unfortunately, you couldn’t really spend time on the beach relaxing without feeling like you were standing in front of a sand blaster because of the gale-force winds. Tom was able to take advantage of the tides and the incredibly wide, flat beach to do a lot of skim boarding; reading a book, however, was pretty much out of the question. But really, just sitting on the deck watching the surf was worth it.
Sunset at Ahipara 
Loved watching the sunsets from the yard.
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