Unexpected Journeys: Part 1

The weather was continuing to be unseasonably fine, so on Friday we planned some journeying around the countryside.

First on the agenda was Cathedral Cove, which we had admired from the ocean a few days earlier. We arrived mid-morning and managed to snag a parking spot. (We had actually driven to the parking lot after our boat trip on Tuesday, but there was nary a parking spot in sight. It was too late in the day, and tourism is booming on the peninsula.) 

The signs predicted it would take us 45 minutes to reach the cove, but we had lots to do that day so we hoofed it, climbing over hill and dale with great speed, and made it in 25 minutes.

We felt pretty awesome!

The trail climbs up and down a lot and follows the coastal cliffs.

You can see Sail Rock off to the right, behind the big white cliff.

Here I am, trying to look Hobbit-ish and not quite succeeding.

The Cove was closed to visitors for several years, due to falling rocks. 

Not sure what changed in the meantime, but we were glad for it.

Many stairs were climbed that day, and many more descended as we reached the beach.

I had to make a dash in between waves, but somehow Anne managed to saunter casually.

It was such a glorious day, I was wishing I had brought my swimsuit.

Actually, I was wishing I looked human in a swimsuit.

My sister, on the other hand, looks quite fabulous in a swimsuit.

Not that I'm jealous or anything. If I ate as much pumpkin as she does, I would probably look good in mine too!

John, holding up Sail Rock.

Really, he is!

He got a little confused in this one and started doing his t'ai chi instead.

There is something about Sail Rock... 

The base of the rock is very eroded.

The grand pohutakawas at the entrance to the beach are covered in epiphytes.

I love epiphytes.

I also love pohutakawas.

You say poh-hoo-tah-kah-wah.

You're welcome.

Our sojourn at Cathedral Cove was short-lived, as we had places to go, so back we went.

We left the east coast of the peninsula and drove the notorious gravel 309 road to the west coast. 

There may exist in the world a more windy (long "i") and nausea-inducing road in the world, but I have not traveled it. It is only 22 kilometres long but feels much longer.

Anne and John had gone this way a couple of years earlier and have some hair-raising tales of narrow right-of-ways between road construction and sheer cliffs, but this time our trip was fairly uneventful.
As we neared the end of the road, we came across the main reason for our journey.

Stu and his pigs.

This eccentric man lives with and loves his pigs. There are about a hundred of them, by many accounts, and they wander freely around the road and his family's 500 acres and sleep in his bedroom. 

Sometimes, people drive recklessly past his farm and purposely run over the pigs, which makes Stu very sad. Mind you, one of the first things the pigs do when you pull up in a car is to try to crawl underneath it, so possibly they deserve it.

At first, we thought that Stu lived in the caravan, which was really too awful to contemplate, but he told us that he has a house on the other side of the road. The pigs inhabit this area.

This pig came over to me and promptly lay down and played dead.

Weird.

The pigs come from wild stock and are dead ugly.

Ugly, I tell you!

Stu said that people often drop roosters off, so there are quite a few poultry toddling around as well.

My sister, who is the proud owner of an over-developed sense of compassion, packed a grocery bag filled with fruit from her trees, cake, and chocolate to give to Stu, thinking that maybe he doesn't eat very well. As John and I were endeavouring to cuddle one of the ugly piglets, who kept squealing at us, she went to the back of the van and opened the hatchback. 

What you see here is the aftermath, because I was nowhere near quick enough to snap a photo of what took place. As soon as Anne lifted the bag out of the van she was attacked by a bevy of pigs, the largest of which tore a hole in the bag with his prodigious teeth and the fruit went rolling around on the ground. It was snatched up by various pigs in a matter of fractions of a second. 

Anne was slightly traumatized and John and I stood watching helplessly.  

Stu holds the remaining treats (luckily, the cake and chocolate were intact) and instructed John on the finer points of piglet-holding. We finally understood that the reason the piglet kept squealing was that his tail had been mangled, something to do with a car. Which was kind of gross, if you ask me.

Stu is a conundrum. He is well-spoken and seems to be intelligent. He loves his pigs and is sad when people abuse them. He must have money, because he isn't starving, yet he lives alone and chooses to go barefoot amongst the pig poo. He is quite proud of being a tourist attraction. Who knows, I suppose, what shapes such a person's choices?

Anne said, I don't think we'll stop there again.
Good idea, I replied.

A slight diversion

Evenings are pretty quiet at the Love Shack at the beach, as New Zealand television (while it may have a few more channels than the one that it had when I was a resident) is still quite bereft of quality programming. 

In my opinion.

So, one night, we took turns showing our favourite YouTube videos to each other. 

John's tended towards classic rock concerts.

Mine leaned more to Kid History videos.

This one is classic. I laugh uproariously every time I watch it.

How many times have I watched it, you ask? Well, my smarty-pants reader, I have no idea, but I dare you to stop at just one!

The next night, we rented a pile of movies, half of which turned out to be duds or too profane to watch. Which adds fuel to my already-stated low opinion of the entertainment market. But I did find something at the movie store that might make my American readers feel a little better about the rising price of chocolate in our fair country:

Yes, that is 48 ounces.

Three pounds of Reece's Pieces for $34.95.

Next time I go I'll take a suitcase of them and maybe it will pay for the air fare.

And evenings may be quiet, but you get some of the best sunsets on earth.

Sunshine and seascapes

After settling in for a day and visiting with Mum, we decided to spend a day exploring up the coast. We were following our whimsy and some narrow, serpentine roads.
The sign said "Hahei Beach" and it sounded intriguing, so off we went.
It was almost deserted.

Except for the tractors, which the locals use to pull their boats onto the beach.

When we parked, we noticed a sign for boat tours of Mercury Bay, and one of the tractors had another sign on it. It was only half an hour till the next tour, so we decided to wait on the off-chance that there was room on the boat. 

We sat on some steps and admired the crazy spider web.

And got dizzy from watching the sun reflecting on the ocean.

And when the boat landed in the surf, we were ecstatic to hear that there were exactly three seats left on the next one.

Within minutes, we had paid our fee and donned our life jackets and nimbly climbed aboard.

Well, the first two, anyway.

Anne and I got to sit in the front, because we are short, we supposed.

Poor John had to sit with his all of his six-foot-four-ness in the back.

We waved at him a lot!

The Coromandel Peninsula was once a hub of volcanic activity, and the islands and cliffs are composed of volcanic rock. It is a mixture of ash and pumice called ignimbrite, and the ash is comprised of glass shards and crystal fragments. It erodes easily and the designs on the cliffs surrounding the bay are fascinating and beautiful.

We covered a lot of ground in an hour and sometimes the boat went really fast! It was a trick, let me tell you, to be gripping the handle with one hand and trying to get a flattering photo of the two of us (with our ears flattened to our heads and our hair slicked back in the wind) and not bouncing out of the boat when we hit a wave at full speed.

It was thrilling. We laughed and shrieked and embarrassed old JD to death. Just as well he wasn't sitting next to us.

We loved the look of Cathedral Cove, where bits if the Narnia movies were filmed. This is where the children arrive in Narnia.

The Cove can only be reached by hiking or by boat. If you hike in, you must run through this archway, dodging the waves if you are lucky, in order to get to the beach.

Sail Rock sits out slightly in the surf.

There are numerous sea caves and arches along the coast, and we went into many of them. 

Inside the biggest cave we entered.

And out we go.

It was an outrageously fun experience and we were very pleased with ourselves for splurging on it.

As we left the town, we saw this funny sight. 

Apparently, sometimes we don't bother with a boat when we go to the beach, we just take the wifey and darling child on the back of the tractor.

We checked out Hot Water Beach, where you can dig yourself a hot-water pool at low tide and bask to your heart's content. Another residual benefit of the thermal activity. We didn't avail ourselves of the moment, but we did make the most of some photo ops.

I made John cover the "s", 'cause he's singular, don't you know?

 

The frangipani, or plumeria, which often adorns leis in Hawaii. The smell is heavenly.

Moko Art Gallery is the best we found. We even went back to it a couple of days later. There was lots of great New Zealand art and, you know me, I could have bought the store!

We strolled along the beach in Whitianga and I loved this tree wrapped around a tree.

On the way home we stopped at the twin kauri trail. We did the short hike, thinking the kauris were along the trail, and got slightly lost, only to find that these trees, which were at the entrance, are the eponymous twins. 

It was getting late and it was a bit spooky in the forest. 

It was a satisfying day and we arrived home tired but happy.

And now, just because I can, some photos of my favourite succulents.

This one was at the Moko Gallery and is a most unusual plant. The spikes are sharp and leave their imprint from when the leaves were tightly folded, so that the leaves look like a patchwork. We asked about buying a start, because there were lots of babies, and the cashier told us to take all we wanted, as it throws babies all the time.
So we did.