[Haywood asked if she could write the blog entry tonight and I graciously let her because I really wanted to read my book any way but after seeing what she wrote, you dear reader may never want me back. However, you are still stuck with my pictures and not the fancy ones she takes.]
Day 3 began with a moral dilemma; one of our dorm roommates was in Cormandel with no car (his first major error) and really had nothing to do. Taylor, being the nicer of the two of us, felt that we should offer to take him on our hike; I (being the less nice one) thought we shouldn’t because we weren’t planning to come back that night. As usual, evil won and Taylor cringed as he shelled out a whopping $95 for the bus fare to and from the trail. We felt bad for a while, but it ended up being a good thing because we never did find the trail. Instead, we headed across the Peninsula on well marked roads.
On the other side, we headed to Cathedral Cove, a famous bay hike. We found the top of the trail head (step 1!) and began tramping. Unfortunately, this day was not allowing our plans, and the trail was closed due to falling debris. Taylor wouldn’t let me follow the other hikers and go past the caution sign, but as I am typing this our dorm mates are telling me about how they did and it was wonderful! Blame Taylor! Luckily, we found another bay, while not as famous or impressive (allegedly) it was quite pretty.
Taylor, trying to get back her adventurous reputation, began climbing the rocks and we ended up rock hopping around the cape to the next bay, two for the price of one! (They were free, but whatever.)
After our rock adventure we headed down the road to Hahai where we got a picnic lunch (which was then stolen by some audacious birds) and sat on the beach.
When we had soaked up all the sun we could stand we headed to, wait for it, yet another beach, Hot Water Beach! It is famous because it sits on top of some sort of geothermal spring so if you dig a hole on the beach it becomes a hot springs of sorts. We were satisfied to just stick our feet into the sand and feel the warmth, maybe, but we did enjoy watching everyone flock to the 10×10 patch while leaving the rest of the beach barren.
Our last excursion for the day was Shakespeare Rock/Lonely Bay. We hiked down into yet another bay where there is a rock formation that looks like Shakespeare’s nose, maybe.
In any case, I had a great time looking at the different rocks and algae growing on them.
Our day was finally over, all we had left was a 30 minute drive along the coast to Tairua where we had decided to stay for the night. As we were crossing one of the mountain passes we began to hear a funny noise as we went around the turns – we had a flat tire. Thankfully, Taylor has had flat tires before so she had some idea of what to do. At this point a nice Frenchman appeared and offered to help, together we got the car propped up, but try as we might we couldn’t get the rusty bolts out. Exit Frenchman, picture frantic little Taylor and Haywood pouring shampoo on their tire trying to loosen the bolts, this may have happened. Since the shampoo only succeeded in being amusing, we called the NZ AAA, similarly called AA. Just as I was about to give them my credit card number; superman pulled up and changed our tire, while his engine remained running, in under two minutes. He was actually just a Dad with two daughters who saw us struggling in his rearview mirror and was nice enough to come back at save us and $140! He also taught us the nifty little trick of using our feet to loosen the bolts instead of trying, in vain, obviously, to use our weak little arms.
After all this excitement we were back on the road. When we finally pulled into Tairua we were tired and hungry. We checked into a hostel and went to the grocery store. By this point it was about 8pm, the grocery store closed at 6pm. Typical. Taylor and I were too tired and couldn’t stomach the fried food at the gas station restaurant so we ended up eating raw green beans and fruit which we had picked up at a stand earlier in the day. I hope it was nutritious, because satisfying it was not. It was an excitement packed day and we were both happy to snuggle into our beds that evening.
