The week before we all departed on various end-of-year adventures, Lisa, Katrin and I decided to take one last road trip together: a quick jaunt through the Coromandel peninsula. I'd been there with my host family when I first arrived (and would go back the next weekend for Christmas), but it was nice to see some more of the area with my friends, a final beach-filled holiday with two of the closest friends I've made this year [I MISS YOU GUYS ALREADY!!!!]
We started the day in Thames, scouring the local market for free samples and interesting people. The smaller towns in NZ don't offer a whole lot in terms of excitement, but they're perfect for wandering through, overhearing conversations on the best way to seal a nice wooden rocker, or watching fellow townies greet each other and rattle off idle gossip like it's Stars Hollow.
We started the day in Thames, scouring the local market for free samples and interesting people. The smaller towns in NZ don't offer a whole lot in terms of excitement, but they're perfect for wandering through, overhearing conversations on the best way to seal a nice wooden rocker, or watching fellow townies greet each other and rattle off idle gossip like it's Stars Hollow.
After driving over the tip of the peninsula on characteristic pin curve roads, we made our first real stop at New Chums Beach, the last beach in the area that isn't accessible by car. Although we somehow ignored the clearly marked path to the beach and took a long detour down another (lovely, but not Lonely Planet material) beach, we eventually made our way across the stones and streams that led to New Chums. It was a perfect day for lounging in the soft white sand and listening to birds in the shade of the knobby cliffside, reveling in the unapologetic laziness that is somehow perfunctory at the beach.
Once we left the beach and were situated at our hostel, we decided to spend the last hours of sunlight seeking out a beautiful waterfall documented in Lonely Planet, along the dusty, unpaved 309 road that cuts through the middle of the peninsula. After I almost had a heart attack driving past speeding cars on the pencil thin road, we ended up at what looked marginally like a pull off, but with no sign pointing to the location of any waterfall. There was a small path leading down from the pull off, so we followed that and found ourselves at the top of a waterfall: pretty, but by no means the towering 10 meter spectacle we had expected to find.
Disappointed, we walked back to the car, and saw that a few meters away on the road was the actual pull off for the waterfall we were seeking! The sign said to allow up to an hour to walk to the waterfall, so with sunset fast approaching we started off, eager to find this place. We immediately found ourselves at the base of the puny waterfall, and barely gave it a glance as we started down the path...
...that turned out to not be a path at all. After a few minutes we lost any sign of a maintained pathway. We kept trudging through, disparaging the NZ government for taking such poor care of its trails! At one point I even ventured into the river to wander up, sure that the waterfall had to be up ahead. The sign said it was there, an hour away! But eventually we hit a huge rock wall, and had to admit that we had failed, somehow, to find this mysterious path. We wandered back to our old friend, Small Waterfall, begrudging its existence in the absence of what we wanted.
When we got back in the car and set off for the hostel, we looked up the entry in Lonely Planet again. Lo and behold, it mentioned a 2 minute walk to a beautiful waterfall, right where we had been. Small Waterfall had been our white whale all along! We had been duped by signage and a gross overestimation of size....but at least we got a good laugh out of it.
Disappointed, we walked back to the car, and saw that a few meters away on the road was the actual pull off for the waterfall we were seeking! The sign said to allow up to an hour to walk to the waterfall, so with sunset fast approaching we started off, eager to find this place. We immediately found ourselves at the base of the puny waterfall, and barely gave it a glance as we started down the path...
...that turned out to not be a path at all. After a few minutes we lost any sign of a maintained pathway. We kept trudging through, disparaging the NZ government for taking such poor care of its trails! At one point I even ventured into the river to wander up, sure that the waterfall had to be up ahead. The sign said it was there, an hour away! But eventually we hit a huge rock wall, and had to admit that we had failed, somehow, to find this mysterious path. We wandered back to our old friend, Small Waterfall, begrudging its existence in the absence of what we wanted.
When we got back in the car and set off for the hostel, we looked up the entry in Lonely Planet again. Lo and behold, it mentioned a 2 minute walk to a beautiful waterfall, right where we had been. Small Waterfall had been our white whale all along! We had been duped by signage and a gross overestimation of size....but at least we got a good laugh out of it.
We spent the evening chatting and laughing (and catching bits and pieces of Independence Day floating in from the lounge), and drove the next morning to Cathedral Cove. I'd seen it last year on a boat tour with my host family, but it was fun to hike down to the actual beach, see it up close and wander around Narnia for awhile (you might recognize this as where the Pevensies end up at the beginning of the Prince Caspian movie!) We started out with clouds, but the longer we sat in the sand the more the sun peeked out, and eventually we were rewarded with a warm afternoon for our last trip together.
From there we tried our best to dig our own hot pool on Hot Water Beach, but to no avail. We'd calculated the tides wrong, and hot water was nowhere to be found. We still had a nice lunch (cold leftovers from the hostel-surprisingly delicious!) in the sun, soaking up every last ounce of the summer sun.
It was so bittersweet to return from this last trip, so grateful for the memories but ever closer to my departure (a departure I'm still suffering from at the moment). We had an au pair Christmas party the next night, the last time I would see everyone together before I left. It was such a great evening, enjoying the company of these girls who have become such important parts of my life in such a short span of time. I'll report more on my melancholy in another post, but suffice it to say: I had a lot to be grateful for this Christmas.