New Car & Coromandel

Wednesday 24th January 2007

First thing this morning we went to pick up the new car - a white Mazda 626 Station Wagon. Rego ACH479. Jes had definitely had enough of driving the Selespeed. Too many incidents of fighting with the gears in heavy downtown traffic!!

Throwing caution to the wind we decided to go down and then back up to the Coromandel Peninsula. It took 4 hours to drive 180 kms. Single lane roads with lots of twists and turns but beautiful breathtaking scenery. Grownups were "ooh"ing and "aah"ing at the view and the kids were in the back "are we there yet?"

We chose to stay at Cooks Beach so named because it was the first place that Captain Cook landed when he arrived in NZ. There is a wonderful long, and quiet beach there that we in fact only visited on the first night for a quick walk, play and splash before we retired back to camp to have a compulsory bbq.
Picture show Lonely Bay with Cooks Beach in the background.