mexirish...nz

Cathedral Cove set the bar very high it has to be said.  When we got back to our cars, we discovered that we were mostly hungry, so the consensus was reached that we should try to find somewhere to eat.   So, we followed Tom, who thought he knew of a suitable place to eat.  However, this turned out to be a Ferry port (end of the road) and we had no notion of where to go next. It was starting to get late by this point, but since we had the tent in the boot, we weren't that worried. I switched on my tomtom to see if it knew of any good places to eat nearby.  It did : claimed that the closest place was a little cafe/restaurant.  I gave them a call, and they told me that the kitchen would be open for another half an hour.  Excellent! I programmed the GPS and off we went.  10 minutes later, we still weren't near the place.  Strange. The tomtom now claimed that what had started as a 10 minutes drive had 30 minutes left to go. ...

I'm not generally the sort of person to make wild & outragous over-exagerations, but I think that this entry may qualify as an exception.  The Coromandel region in New Zealand is probably the most beautiful place in the world.  But more on that later. We spent Christmas with our good friends Dom, Jen & Jordan.  We had a fairly traditional christmas - a nice roast dinner, movie and presents. Very pleasent evening was had, and we were all nicely full by the end of it.  Jen's mince pies were remarkably good :) The following morning, Jacqui and I went north.  It was our other good friend Dave's (60th!) birthday on the 27th, but since he lives in Auckland, we decided to head a day before so that we'd be freah enough to wish him many happy returns without collapsing in exhaustion.  As always the drive north is outstandingly beautiful, but long (9 fekking hours!). The views of the mountains along the desert road are breathtaking, even after seeing the...