Tearooms of State Highway 1 - Part 6

My First DOC Visit - Auckland to Thames

The day after arriving back in Auckland, I headed out to a friend's bach at Piha, my local sea-side haunt. A black sand beach with a savage dislike for people being in its waters. Try as it might though, it cannot keep people out. Thus there has evolved the Piha tradition of never actually swimming, but rather continuously walking and never getting anywhere. Walk, walk, walk, duck a wave, find your footing, walk, walk, walk, duck a wave, find your footing, walk, walk, get knocked down by a wave causing you to lose your footing indefinitely etc. But what can I say? It's fun. So a group of my friends and I headed down to the beach, a quick game of touch, then into the water and walk, walk, duck…  Later that night we drank, but what little of that I remember does not need to be spoken of here.

 This morning I returned home, again, and this afternoon I left, again. This time for 3 weeks, so I made damn sure I had my guitar, my book and my insect repellent, as well as everything else I could have potentially forgotten. As far as I can know at the moment, I did pretty well.

 I wasn't feeling 100% after last night, so it was a bit harder to get on the road. I finally managed to do so around 2pm. It was close to a straight trip to the Coromandel Peninsula. There was a brief stop at a rest area on the side of SH1 just outside of Auckland. As I was all but asleep at the wheel I thought this was best for all involved, which included myself and Palin. Not to mention, of course, a fare few unsuspecting motorists, and while I'm sure they'd love to meet me, doing so at a collective speed of 200kph might put a damper on the relationship before we'd really had a chance to get to know each other. Then there was a brief detour to Ngatea to visit the Copper Kettle Café & Tearooms, purely for academic reasons, where I had a very nice mince pie. But other than those two quick stops, it was a straight trip from Auckland to the DOC campground at Kauaeranga Valley, nestled in the beautiful Coromandel Forest Park. There are a number of individual DOC campgrounds in this area, only two of which allow dogs. Since I have one of those, my choices were limited. The first of the two was also the first of them all. Hotoritori campground. This is where I planned on staying, however the first thing I saw when I drove in was a torched station wagon in the middle of the campground. Considering this a bad omen, I decided to drive to the second dog-friendly campground in the hope that it would contain fewer traces of mindless criminal vandalism. Lucky for me, it did. Booms Flat campground is larger than Hotoritori, has a brand new long drop (although long drops don't really age, and by that I mean that the second they're built they look like they've been used a thousand times, and usually come bundled with an aroma to back that up) and is more secluded from the dirt road that connects the campgrounds. All good things I thought, so this is where I chose to stay.

In the few hours I've been here I've made good use of my newly remembered guitar, plan on very shortly making use of my newly remembered insect repellent and have every intention of making use of my newly remembered book before I go to bed.