Coromandel Town

30 Jan

This is a lovely little town on the west coast of the lush and hilly Coromandel Peninsula and the weather finally turned favourable. We were staying in a holiday park cottage with a pool and other good campground amenities like laundry (always welcomed on a cycle trip), bbq’s, table tennis (to keep our pickleball skills up hopefully), a large bouncing pillow which we didn’t partake in but enjoyed watching the kids as well as lots of shops and services close by. We cooked half our meals at the holiday park and went out the other half, once to a turkish restaurant and once we bought savoury pies to reheat. There is a definite ‘pie’ culture here which George is keen on checking out. Also the coffee in the cafes is excellent, ‘flat white’ being the norm. We bbq’d steak for two nights and surprisingly beef is about half of what it costs at home.

We spent the first day redoing our routes and our accommodations for the next week due to the route change and luckily had no trouble re-booking elsewhere. We did lose one night of refund with our cancellations unfortunately, but it could have been worse. Over the next few days we did a couple of shorter bike rides around the area visiting some beaches and waterfalls and climbing some hills trying to get our legs in shape for these big hills. We also visited Driving Creek Railway, a unique and interesting attraction with a narrow gauge bush/mountain train that takes you up 173 meters into a regenerating native forest area. It was built by hand by a local potter who used it initially to haul clay to his workshop but he transformed it into an attraction to promote conservation and share the beauty of the land. During the 75 min. trip up the mountain you see many native and some non native plants and trees as well as an interesting assortment of the man’s pottery.