Friday 13 February 2026 – Jane had ensured that the room we had at the Auckland City Hotel had a kitchenette, which gave two advantages. Firstly, of course, we could prepare mugs of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey* at times of our choosing; and secondly, we could prepare our own breakfast, since the buffet at the hotel was OK but short on fruit and not particularly good value. As well as the longed-for dental gear, we’d also stocked up with fruit and yoghurt so that we could breakfast at leisure and reasonably healthily.
The mission for yesterday was simple – check out of the hotel, pick up a hire car and drive to our next destination, Whitianga, on the Coromandel Peninsula. We manhandled our bags for the 10-minute walk to the car hire office. It’s actually an 8-minute walk, but one tends to spend a lot of time standing around waiting for the lights to change at busy and large intersections. On occasion I’m tempted to ignore the lights and just walk across if it’s obvious that there’s no reason to wait. But four or five lanes lugging baggage encouraged caution, so I waited for the lights with barely-concealed impatience.
At the Budget offices, the hire process appeared to be going smoothly until Kevin, the chap sorting us out, queried the end date of the booking, which he had as 22nd March. This is, indeed, the end date of our trip here, but we only need this car until we get to Christchurch on the South Island, at which point we hop a train. We were supposed to have a booking for a new hire car for when/where we disembark the train and thus the rest of our stay, and it seems that the local agents for Discover The World hadn’t twigged this. Fortunately the sainted Kevin (he of the arcade?) and his boss, Sue, sorted the situation out for us and we’re grateful for their staff work. The queue of customers building up behind us probably weren’t, though.
So we took possession of a brand spanking new Mitsubishi ASX, with just 35km on the clock, which will be our steed for the next three weeks or so. It’s a bit larger than I’m used to (though not the utter monster we got in A Coruña when we walked the Camino Finisterre) so we started a bit gingerly whilst I got used to the car. Being Japanese and in New Zealand, the indicators and wipers are the other way round from UK cars, so driving round roundabouts with the wipers going will be a feature of the next few days – and the first few days of driving back in the UK, no doubt.
Anyhoo… our exit from Auckland was smooth and through only slightly congested traffic, and then we had the decision to make as to whether to take the more direct route to Whitianga or go the pretty way. We decided on the latter. And it was a very pleasant drive, through lots of typical North Island landscapes.
We (of course) saw sheep.
New Zealand is often quoted as having more sheep than people, and ChatGPT tells me that this is still true, though not as much as in the 1980s, when there were some 22 sheep per inhabitant. These days it’s nearer four or five. What surprised a little, though, were the numbers of cattle.
The area we were driving through, round the bottom of the Firth of Thames, being flat, was obviously very well suited to either dairy or beef farming. I read that there are about half as many cattle as sheep on the island, and they’re split roughly 60-40 in favour of dairy animals.
I guess many people will have read of the enormous amounts of rainfall that have been suffered in the North Island, and saw for our own eyes some evidence of its effects.
We stopped for coffee (OK, yes, and ice cream) at The Pink Shop at Kaiaua,
which is a very individual kind of place, serving as cafe, ice-creamery, eatery, corner shop, post office and second-hand bookshop.
They claim to serve the best coffee in Kaiaua, and I think this might be because there isn’t another cafe there, but it was a welcome break on the journey and the ice-cream was very good.
A little further along the road there actually was another cafe, but we decided not to stop there.
We carried on, through ever-impressive New Zealand landscapes but darkening weather.
After one leaves the flat plains south west of the Firth of Thames and starts up the Coromandel Peninsula, the roads become quite twisty, with climbs and descents, so sometimes one is by the coast
but more often into more hilly countryside. As one might expect, this gives rise to some more handsome scenery, and the roads feature lots of places where it’s safe to stop at the side to take photos.
It really was lovely scenery and it made the journey a pleasure.
We arrived at our accommodation, the Beachfront Resort in Whitianga, at around 4pm yesterday, and were greeted very genially by Paul on the reception and taken to our suite, which is comfortable and is set up entirely for self-catering. So we had a cup of tea, obviously, and then headed out for the fleshpots of Whitianga in search of (a) understanding where we had to get to for the items on our itinerary whilst we’re here, (b) sustenance for the day and (c) breakfast for the subsequent days we’ll be here.
Our schedule includes a couple of planned activities: a half-day cruise around the local coast and an all-day hike. In both cases we have to get to the local wharf, and for the hike we have to catch the shuttle ferry across to the other side (a place engagingly called Ferry Landing).
Having understood how all that worked, our next priority was to find a restaurant for an early dinner. Jane has good instinct for these things, and so, despite the fact that it was raining, we made our way past several eateries in order to get to a place called Salt,
which is a cocktail bar and restaurant. And a very good restaurant, too: we had a great meal based around snapper (yes, I had fish’n’chips) for outstanding value. Whilst we ate, the rain came lashing down, right through the screen that was supposed to protect us,
But it was only a shower, albeit a biblical one, and it was interesting to see the screen once the gusting wind had cleared the rain.
All we had to do then was to find a supermarket to get comestibles for the morrow, and there’s a substantial Woolworth’s in the town so that bit was straightforward.
And that was yesterday sorted. Today we were supposed to be going on the cruise, but it, sadly, fell victim to the windy and wet weather,
but the hike should go ahead tomorrow, and can maybe be engineered to see on land some of the sights we would have seen from the boat. The practical upshot of this is that much of today has been a day (thus far) of splendid relaxation and further trying to get over jet lag (I’m getting there, slowly).
However, sloth for an entire day is not an option (I’m told. In no uncertain terms); we are travelling and so we Can’t Just Sit Around All Day (bugger!). What do you do on a rainy day? You go to a museum. Fortunately, Whitianga has one. What luck!
Whitianga might be a tiny place, but the area has some significant history. Just around the corner – the other side of that ferry journey – is Cook’s Beach, where he moored the Endeavour in 1769. He witnessed the transit of Mercury whilst here, and hence gave the name of Mercury Bay to the area. He also attended a powhiri, a welcoming ceremony with a local chieftain, where they exchanged gifts (Cook donated the potato to this new land) and established a meeting of minds between the two nations. The interpreter, by the way, was a gifted local linguist.
The museum covers the period from 950AD when the first humans, a Polynesian called Kupe and his crew, set foot on New Zealand; but it wasn’t until 150 years later that Polynesians came in numbers to colonise the new land.
Obviously, there’s Polynesian history figures in the exhibits, with models of the boats they used
This is a model of a 20m replica, Te Aurere, built in the 1990s to demonstrate the voyaging capabilities of these boats.
and examples demonstrating the skill in carving.
There’s a lot of information about Cook, of course, and a rather uninspiring display about HMS Buffalo, a convict and timber transport vessel which was wrecked in Mercury Bay in 1840 (the year of the Treaty of Waitangi), It gave its name to Buffalo Beach, beside which I am typing the very words. Other things covered in the museum include: inevitably, the Kiwi
among displays of other local birds
including, let us not forget, the Giant Moa
an enormous (extinct) bird with an improbably small head; information about historical aspects of the area, including mining; and information about the Kauri tree, an important conifer, particularly to the Māori, who historically used its timber in boat construction (pub quiz fact: it’s the only native timber that floats) and its gum for a variety of purposes. A European-driven industry grew up around it in the 1800s, similar to the Huon Pine we saw in Tasmania, and by the 1930s most Kauri forest had been logged. It’s also significantly threatened by Kauri Dieback, which is transmitted via tiny spores, very often carried on the soles of shoes. This kind of ecological threat explains why biosecurity is taken so seriously on entry to New Zealand.
There is something of a disconnect between the opening hours of the various establishments in Whitianga; the museum stays open until 4pm, but the restaurants, as far as we could tell, don’t open until 5pm (and the cafes closed at 2pm). So we pottered back to our accommodation for a couple of hours before venturing once more into town. Having looked at the options, we settled on a place called Get Stoked and headed there through some reasonably heavy rain. It turned out to be a cheerful and slightly noisy place, and provided very tasty salads and fish, though a Greek would not have immediately recognised the salad bit. We ended up chatting to a couple of old codgers on the table next to us for a few minutes before we left. It was a swift but very amiable meal and the pissing rain had stopped by the time we left, which was a plus.
We’re on a tour involving some hiking tomorrow, on the Cook’s Bay side, and have to get across the ferry betimes to meet our guide, so we’re back to early starts for a couple of days. The forecast is basically damp – anything from showers to deluges, temperatures in the mid-20s and humidity in the mid-90s. I hope we don’t get too badly drenched, but you’ll have to come back to find out how the day unfolded.
* To their credit, the Auckland City Hotel provided Earl Grey tea in the room and large cups from which to drink it. It wasn’t Twining’s Finest, but it was perfectly decent; evidence, should one need it, that New Zealand is a civilised country.
