Coromandel Peninsula
Trip Start
Unknown
1
55
149
Trip End
Ongoing
Tairua, North Island, New Zealand
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Somewhere along the road, we stopped at a scenic lookout, and our driver/guide, Vinny, introduced me to a bush plant called bracken that tasted exactly like roasted almonds. Delicious!
Next, we headed to the hot water beach. When we dug a hold in the sand near the water, it filled up with water from below that was really hot, creating a natural hot tub. Thanks to the all of the guys on our trip with enthusiastic digging skills, we had a whole complex of pools to enjoy with temperatures ranging from hot to scalding, thus suiting everyone’s tastes.
Dinner was an awesome veggie-packed fish curry, with Dec’s birthday cake for dessert. Sarah decorated it herself and it was adorable and tasty. Dec savored the moment by relighting his own candles multiple times, exclaiming over the cake and saying, "Oh really, for me?" and trying to get us to sing for him again and again. What a nut ☺ Two dogs who live at the camp joined us for the festivities: a chubby black Lab we named Barbosa, and a Bichon Frise we named Bubbles.
It was our best star night yet, with hundreds of them twinkling at us. It was fun to try and sort out the constellations, which are all different from the ones at home in the Northern Hemisphere.
