Our last day in New Zealand.

What to do on your last day somewhere? Well as much as possible of course. After breakfast we went up to Shakespeare Point to have a look at Cook's Beach and Mercury Bay. Now I will give you three guesses why they are called that. I think the first is pretty obvious and the second was because he stopped here to observe the Transit of Mercury across the sun on 9th Nov. 1769. Of course the Maori had other names for the place, but now it goes by the English ones. 

After that we drove to Hahei bech, which is just gorgeous and took a water taxi to Cathedral Cove. I managed to get soaked. Then back to Hahei and off down the road to Hot Water Beach. Now this was the most interesting. Under the sands are fissures which let up hot water. You dig down and make yourself a mini hot tub. The area is only accessible either side of low tide, so it was odd to see a crowd of people wedged into a small section of a lovely beach. We walked over to see what the fuss was about. I stuck my toe in the sand and yelped as it was so hot. I seemed to have found one of the springs! So there we are. The Coromandel peninsula in a couple of hours! http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Water_Beach

After a lovely lunch of pancakes we drove over to Auckland , about a two hour drive. Another lovely B&B. Although things did not get off to the best of starts. As I was walking up the street, a woman walked across and a couple of seconds later I saw a young girl running after her. I knew she was going to run into the road. I yelled at her to stop, only to be greeted with a tirade of abuse from the woman who I assume was her mother. I pointed out I was only worried about the little girl, and was verbally abused for my efforts. I suspect she knew she was in the wrong and was feeling defensive. Now FYI 3 children were hit by a car here last week. They were between 5 and 10 years old. Luckily none of them were killed, but they showed on TV what had happened ( not the actual hit ) but again they had just run out onto the road, the driver stood no chance at stopping. 

Oh well. 

The rest of the evening was more successful. We caught a bus into the city and had a lovely time wandering around. We went up the Sky Tower which as stunning views across the city. It really is a lovely place. We sat and drank cocktails and watched the yacht races in the bay below. There are some very volcano looking mounds around as well! 

So there you are. Sydney is next on the itinerary. I shall try and gather my thoughts about NZ but as it is a 5am start tomorrow I think that is enough for now.