We went for a walk up the mountain bike track yesterday! Well it is one that I for one will NOT be riding, it was tough enough to walk, but there was a lovely grove of young kauri on the first ridge. Worth the slog to see them. The Kennett brothers mountain bike book mentions this track in passing…
“It’s hard to be grumpy in such a beautiful part of the world, unless you’re trying to ‘ride’ a really poxy track”.
Last night I had met a lovely German guy who was walking his way around the Coromandel. He had not enjoyed the trip from Port Jackson to Stony Bay as it was a great deal further than he had been led to believe. I had seen him arrive with a pack on his back and a smaller one on his chest! Anyway after dinner I was doing the dishes with Brenda (I use my hot water for doing most of the dishes) and I had gone out to ask if he would like to do his dishes in some hot water. He was very grateful and we got to chatting about his journey and some of the better places to see in New Zealand. He was currently hitch hiking around and I realised that he was going to have a hard job getting a ride out of Stony Bay so I recommended that he go and ask a couple of people to see if he could hitch a ride out. He found a ride with a lovely family from Switzerland who with their two children were here for 7 weeks. I was quite horrified at how woefully unprepared or rather uninformed he was about conditions and distances in New Zealand. Still he must be just one of many who do what he is doing and they seem to survive and go back and tell their friends because they keep on coming!
Today (Tuesday) it was decided that we would move slightly southwards to Waikawau Bay for a change of scenery and see how the fishing was.
Waikawau is a lovely large Dept of Conservation Campsite alongside a lovely sandy bay still on the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsular.
The lovely couple that are currently managing it, Tim and Liz are lovely people and we are currently nestled into a lovely spot at the far end of the camp, near where the old entrance was. We have been told that the old house and office were flooded out with a spring tide combined with a bit of a storm. So a new office and admin building was built higher up at the other end of the camp and looks great.
Just out of interest, although at Stony Bay I had Spark coverage, there is no coverage here with either Spark or Vodafone so this will have to wait til Thursday for posting! (Ed note: actually Saturday….)
So after lunch I decided to launch the kayak and see what was out there. There had been good reports of fish being caught.
My thanks to my sister for the pictures…..
So I headed out towards the reef on the southern end of the bay and managed to catch a lovely John Dory.
Roger made a lovely batter and I cooked the six lovely fillets that we got off it and had them as an first course for dinner. Was lovely. I must say it is a fish that you catch for eating not for the fight that it gives. It was a very boring catch in that respect, no fight at all. But am not complaining at all it was very nice.
Tomorrow will be a walk, a fish or a lazy day….mmm can’t decide….
Safe travels!
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