AA to the rescue and A Beer at Browns Bay
(Some of the photos were taken by Henry and Ruby and I leave you to guess which ones they are.)
Our preparations for the arrival of our family including Emily, Gary, Henry and Ruby and our close friend Lauren, whom I have known since before she was born a few weeks before Emily, were completed. Camping gear, the cup-cakes we baked ready for Ruby’s Birthday Party in the air B&B in Auckland and the rest of our paraphernalia was all tucked away in Vicky the Volvo. The concept of air B&Bs was new to us. These are homes located near to airports and rented to visitors, they do not often cook breakfast for visitors and frequently live elsewhere.
We sat enjoying a sushi lunch and thinking of Ruby turning six during the flight coming over and the fact that Vicky was using a lot of coolant. The final signature went onto our visitor visa application form and all it needed now was a copy marriage cert that was in Emily’s case.
The rain poured down outside Pak n Save as we did a final food shop, Cyclone Debbie was still having an effect.
Fortunately it had stopped by the time we set off south towards Auckland to set up the party in the house before the family arrived. Well that was the plan.
Why do these things so often happen when travelling in the fast lane of a Highway? Once my windscreen was smashed as I went to overtake a lorry on the A1 in the UK. Another time while in Canada we were travelling west towards Calgary when the coil beneath the bonnet of our Safari Landrover died a death and left us drifting towards the hard shoulder just hoping the following vehicles would take avoiding action. Today steam rose in threatening clouds from beneath the bonnet as we approached the northern Auckland area.
It was rush hour but the other motorists saw the steam too and let us migrate left to safety. A friendly policeman reassured us we could use the AA free of charge for a tow if we weren’t members and they would keep an eye on us both on motorway cameras and from his bike.
Thank goodness we had taken out AA cover before we left on our last trip. Soon the AA man arrived and started re-filling the coolant tank. On fuchsia jeaned knees I knelt looking upside down under the engine and thought I spotted the cause. “Aha, yes it’s pouring out underneath,” thinking there was a leak.
“That’s because I’m spilling it,” came the reply. The tow truck arrived and hauled Vicky onto its back and with us in the cab we headed for the garage.
Browns Bay is a pleasant little seaside town. We supped coffee in Starbucks and then lunched on Monteiths Original and chips in an ‘English’ bar, knowing the family had arrived, while the garage did its stuff replacing an eroded coolant cap. Emily texted “We beat you” and we motored the rest of the way to see her standing at the window waving.
Henry practiced selfies with his high flying pet Ruff.
The cabin crew on the Emirates Airline made Ruby a giant card and the Captain made the appropriate announcement and our sixth birthday party completed her celebrations.
The next day we met Caroline, a friend of Lauren’s, in Auckland and she became our guide for the day. We tasted some nice light bagels in the ‘Ugliest Bagel Bar’ and then shot to the viewing deck and restaurant of the Sky Tower for some fine views over the city and the sight of bungee jumpers plummeting to the soft landing at the foot of the tower. Rather them than me.
Devonport is a short ferry ride from the city and is a reminder of how Auckland may have looked a hundred years ago. The Patriot pub gave us a genuine warm welcome and we crowded around a table in the pretty garden for beer, chips and onion rings while the dual purpose umbrella kept first the sun and then the drizzle off us.
Jumping puddles in the park on the way back to the ferry we noticed an old oak tree with hundreds of yellow ribbons around its girth, “Tie a yellow ribbon round an old oak tree, if you still want me”, remember the song?
That evening we had a big family dinner along with Caroline knowing that the next morning we would collect the 6 berth campervan and the family adventure proper would begin.
Hardboiled Eggs and Hot Elbows.
On our long land tour of NZ Rob and I had used eighteen campsites over nearly eight weeks, now with the family we drove to our first of five we would explore with them.
Seabreeze Holiday Park was just inland from the Hot Water Beach on the North east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula and the whole area was recovering from the devastation and drenching it had received from Cyclone Debbie, which had dared to pass into the area south of the usual cyclone track. The road that circles the Peninsula, Highway 25 had recently been closed due to floods and slips and many people had not yet been able to return to their flooded homes.
Alongside the road the fields had transformed into lakes in the low lying areas but the beautiful Kaimai mountain ranges rose as majestic and defiant as ever. We crossed through lush native rainforest to the east coast side as the highway up from Thames on the west side of the peninsula was closed. Fine sandy beaches lay to our right as we travelled north to our destination, following the family in Maui Campervan.
I had chosen well with this campsite not because it was nearly empty with it being the end of the season, nor because there was a sweet blue roan goat tethered near us but because there was a bar and brewery on site! Although to be painfully honest I didn’t know this gem was here when I booked. The Hot Water Beer Brewing Company sold very good beer in can shaped glasses, as beer always tastes better from the can they say. A young Englishman was behind the bar and the welcome was warm. Locals came along in the evening to imbibe and enjoy supper. This was clearly one of Coromandel’s best kept secrets.
It was sunny again the next day as we prepared for the hot water pools on the beach. We sussed the tides and were on the beach, rented spade in hand, just before low water and with three hours to play before the rising tide of the day ended the fun.
Not the first to arrive we started digging, most of us by hand, in a space between the folk who were already languishing in the warm water. A couple near us vacated their pool as they had boiled long enough and the lady arose, very pink legs to be rapidly covered with a towel against the cooler air. Soon we were all relaxing in our two pools. The hot water spring at the top of the beach, next to the HOT WATER warning sign, seeped under the sand to the sea and was closer in places to the surface than in others.
At the top end of our adopted pool the sand and water was too hot to touch and as our arms and elbows sank into the sand to support us they soon burned, so we had to pick our comfort zones. All the boys vacated to the cooler pool (!) and us girls heated nicely thinking of cold British Winters and chatting about nothing in particular. The familiar company of family around us was a real treat after nearly a year of absence. And they had come all that way from the other side of the world, I could hardly believe it.
From the pool next to ours a Chinese family collected the dozen eggs that had been hard boiling and I remembered the Chinese couple who had visited me in my B&B home in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. The wife asked if she could hard boil some eggs in my kitchen so her husband had something to eat if he awoke hungry in the night.
We saw from our relaxed positions some grown men playing in the heat of their pools with their families and then rushing into the cool sea for a dip. This was nature’s own sauna spa and we were loving it.
We passed our pool on to latecomers as they would barely have time to dig theirs before the rising sea would melt the sand walls and as we wandered back to the vehicles I wondered who had been the first to use the natural facility, Maoris I imagine.
We were on the road to Rotorua the next day to experience one of the things I really wanted the family to see, The Mitai Maori Evening, on their own patch of land just outside the town. But first we stopped off at a mini peninsula just outside Tauranga called Mount Maunganui that Caroline had recommended to us as a lunch stop.
Just like Akaroa, a few miles from Christchurch, St Arnaud in the southern lakes and many other waterside towns throughout NZ and Brighton, Eastbourne and Worthing for example in the UK, Maunganui had had its own Riviera time when piers, lidos, beach huts, Punch & Judy and captive performing animals had been part of the nouveau waterside holiday scene. Now replaced with hotels, restaurants and bars, retirement homes, museums to tell the tales, surfing schools and supermarkets the seasiders are here to stay.
There was also a park for the children with spongy soft ground to protect little brains and reassure parents as Henry and Ruby tested their strength and courage on impossible apparatus. Nearby I heard the delicious and familiar sound of a Tui bird and one at a time we held the children up so they could hear and see this friendly individual for themselves with his white ball of feathers at his throat. He was fearless, almost as curious about them as they were of him.
We were safely away from the Coromandel now and hearing weather reports about the approaching Cyclone Cook, for all accounts bigger and more violent than Debbie who passed only a few weeks ago. What is going on we wondered? We came south to escape cyclones and here we are awaiting the second in a month. Zoonie was in safe hands, those of our friend Michelle who had a spare key and knew how to hand pump the bilge from the cockpit and Sharron and Brian at the marina, who also had a key and a petrol powered pump, so no worries there while we enjoyed ourselves.
Unlike its namesake, the curious, caring, cartographer Captain James Cook who mapped much of the coastline and did his own naming of places all over the South Pacific back in the 1770’s, Cyclone Cook was predicted to bounce like a malevolent ball down the east coast of NZ over the coming days, bringing an end to the draught and a boost to dairy farming with fresh grass growth, that at least was a plus point.
Cosy Cottage Campsite was well named for an unexpected reason. On the shore of Rotorua Lake with just a thin strip of ground separating us from the lake edge we pitched on ground warmed by underwater geo thermal activity. A couple of metres from the tent a hot mud pool bubbled and the faint smell of sulphur would be the familiar aroma for the next two days.
In between heavy showers we walked with the children down the path leading to a derelict house on the shore. The rainwater puddles bubbled with gases escaping from underground. “Prickly pear cactus!” Henry announced proudly identifying a healthy specimen that was thriving in the warm wet atmosphere. Numerous pukekos, big long legged chicken like birds with red beaks, moved out of our path as they grazed the warm camp grass.
A very curious tent arrangement stood out amongst the now familiar NZ eccentric taste. It appeared a small camper had been driven in to the tent. See the photo, what do you think? It was lived in by a tall, thin chap who appeared each morning in white shirt, black suit and dark glasses and wandered off through the camp to some mysterious destination. This holiday was certainly broadening the children’s horizons.
Captain Cook Returns making waves.
During the night we awoke to the sound of bubbling, plopping mud in the nearby puddles. Inside the tent was warm and cosy from the heated ground we lay on and we were mighty comfortable. I wondered how far beneath was the thermal activity, hissing boiling and moving water and hot rocks. Just how connected to the centre of the earth were we?
The next day we spent in camp as the rain was nearly constant, denting the sides of our tent and steaming up the camper windows as we played card games and chatted. First thing Rob and I had showered and met in the hot pool room. The camp boasted two swimming pools and three hot tubs, all heated to a greater or lesser extent by pipes of water running through the nearby bubbling mud field, as was the hangi cooker pictured in the previous blog.
Our two round blue pools were daily emptied into the lake, cleaned and refilled with fresh geo thermal heated water with all its health giving properties. They were set in a wooden screened enclosure with lush green plants in pots all around. The atmosphere was magical, mystical even as we shared the same pool and obeyed the signs which asked us to be quiet.
A lady came in and submerged herself, insulated coffee mug in hand and briefly told us these were better than her own pool at home. How much time passed I don’t know, we just got out when we were ready knowing there was a loving family nearby whose company we needed.
I had been so looking forward to the evening ahead. Rob and I could easily have included the evening on our camping tour but we decided to save it until the family were with us. I hoped it would be the totally submersive Maori experience that we would all remember and I was not disappointed.
Run entirely by the Mitai Maori tribe, most of them related, and situated on their own land we were collected and delivered by coach to join around two hundred others from all over the world including a large contingent from Russia who entertained us with a powerful song from the Steppes.
The evening started with a tour of the site including the Hangi oven in which the meat and potato part of supper was cooking. Our compere was a Bill Nighy character with warmth and mannerisms so similar it was untrue. He spoke the fifteen languages needed to say hello to everyone and his habit of involving his audience and literally leaning towards them throughout made his contribution to the evening memorable. He really was good.
I have mentioned before the waka dug-out canoes which were the traditional mode of water transport. We had seen numerous examples all over NZ sat in their cradles and inactive for most of the time. Well on this evening we saw how they looked as the tribesmen in full fighting attire with the chief in their midst paddled along their waka stream, eyes wide open and tongues outstretched. It was quite a spectacle marred only by being stuck behind a camera lens trying to get a good shot for much of the short time they were performing.
After the Haka greeting ceremony and cultural display of dance in one hall we dodged raindrops into the black and white draped dining hall where we tucked into the generous buffet and washed our supper down with Tohu wine from their own vineyard in the same Awatere river valley as Peter Yealand’s Seaview vineyard. The children were holding up fine and taking in everything around them including the numerous other children there.
I was happy. Like so many things one looks forward to, when it comes to it they are special for completely unexpected reasons and the professionalism of the compere was one of them. But it wasn’t over yet. Many folk started leaving and they may have had to but they missed our being divided into small groups and taken for a walk through the camp and seeing genuine old living huts, glow worms, the children’s first experience of them and pools of eels in the waka stream.
Ruby posed for me in front of one hut to show how grownups would have to bend to get into the huts and she had questions to ask of our guide who previously had been helping with dinner. Both children were interested and absorbed and I wondered if they would get the chance to tell their classes at school about what they had seen and learned.
Our tent was dry and warm inside and the mattress was warm from the thermal blanket in the ground in this naturally cosy campsite. It rained all night in camp and since the wind was strong too, we did not hear the bubbling mud in the nearby puddles as we had the night before, instead the lapping of the waves on the Lake shore drove us to install our earplugs as Cook passed over us heading south east. At least we would be heading south west and away from Cook, towards Taupo the next day.