Don't Give Beer To Militias.

So for starts, I went up to Coromandel this week; it's one of the last places I've yet to go in NZ. By my calculation, I have Stewart Island in the far, far south, and the East Cape of the north Island to do yet....which is pretty cool I think!
I 1st went to a place that was difficult to find, and thought I'd be secluded, but nope, there was a bunch of high school kids who kept harassing me for beer. And I thought they were training for a militia too! That was not the best night in the bush.
On the 2nd day, I went to Hot Water Beach, where there's a hot spring beneath the sand. One can dig holes to relax in if you're there at the right time of the tides, but that perfect time wasn't when I was there. So I moved on, to the far, far north of the peninsula.
Up there, the water was warm, the sand was golden, the sky was blue, and the cows plentiful.
I really liked it up there, and it'd be a nice place to have a bach/cabin, but only if you had a boat to get there, since the road was just wild....
And then it was on to the pinnacles, where a 2 hour hike straight up got me to the hut where I dropped off my bag. Then, if at all more possible, it was even more straight up to the top of the pinnacles. They're these crazy eroded rock spires you take ladders up to reach the summit that lets one view both the Hauraki Gulf and the South Pacific on both sided of the peninsula at once. Amazing.
But it gets better: after dark, the rain and wind came. In the morning, it was downright foul out there, but it wasn't too cold. The hike down was the wettest I've ever gotten in all instances where I didn't actually jump into standing water, like a lake.
But it was all fun, and the whole trip gave me perspective and self-reflection, which is what I wanted the trip to do.
There's a whole other post about the Cuba Carnival, but that'll be written tomorrow. I'm done for now!
(Oh, and no pics, 'cause my computer went down again, so it's begun the road to repair now!)