Apparently NZ calls a beach where the water hits the land. I wouldn’t count most of the stops we made on our Christmas Eve day drive…after our pancake breakfast we took a two hour drive on a highway that was a dirt road. We stopped along the way for some waterfall views and such, and made our way north to the Coromandel. No beach. I won’t show you those pictures, they aren’t that pretty. We drove to Whangapoua (interesting fact: Wh pronounced F in Maori) and back, stopping at every “beach” to see if there was any sand on these coasts. We took a very interesting train ride that some guy set up on his land to mine clay for his pottery business. Interesting is the word I use because I’m not sure how else to describe it…there were walls on the sides made of tires, wine bottles, pottery, and the little train did these reversals back and forth all the way up this big hill. The view was nice, the eccentricity made me a little creeped out.

MK managed to convince me to go back to Cathedral Cove and we made the hike down to the Cove in record time, only to have MK nearly eaten by a giant bird. We cooked dinner, had some wine, and Elf was on TV, so it almost felt like home that night!