Coromandel

We drove down from Russell through a Kauri forest in which we saw the oldest Kauri tree in NZ. This dates from around 2000 years ago. It is awesome standing tall and majestically in a dense tropical rain forest in the NW of North Island. Its name is Tane Mahuta (Lord of the Forest).

To get to Coromandel we had to pass through Auckland where the traffic was like the M25 - very busy indeed as 1.5M of the 4M inhabitants of NZ live there. The Coromandel was another beautiful area of the North Island with spectacular coastlines and empty beaches, one of which we chose for a quick swim in the Pacific Ocean. There was no-one else in sight.

Other highlights of the Coromandel included a 1 hour trip on the Driving Creek Railway (narrow gauge) up through the rain forest trees. Also, we walked to Cathedral Cove where the some of the scenes from the Chronicles of Narnia were filmed. Finally we went to the hot sands beach where a dig in the sands reveals piping hot water to laze in.