3rd Dec 2010 - to Whaitanga along the Coromandel Coast
About 40 miles, from Opoutere to Whaitanga (Harbourside Holiday Park). We discovered that you can go from Coromandel town to Auckland on a passenger ferry. zit takes, we were told by a man walking along the shore, bikes. The price is, according to their web site, about $50 dollars. So we are now doing the trip to Coromandel Town tomorrow with the idea of catching the late afternoon ferry. There's only one ferry on a Saturday. Today, after we finally paid and did indeed get the low carbon traveller discount (and not only are we cycling we're planting trees to offset the carbon of our plane flight here) we cycled the pretty delightful miles from Opoutere then along to Cook's Bay, where Steve swam in the dear old Pacific rollers (pretty small) and we saw where Captain Cook landed in order to measure the transit of mercury. Hence the bigger bay's name - Mercury Bay. Then we got a little passenger ferry that took us across to Whaitanga where we stopped cycling at about 5pm, a pretty early stop for us.People exclaim, just as they did in the USA about how tough it must be cycling. Of course, once your legs are used to it and the bike is mechanically sound it isn't particularly tough at all. I guess for a portly non-cyclist it would be a recipe for a heart attack but they just need to start small and work up to it. Don't think they'll bother. The weather today was perfect cycling weather - 24 degrees centigrade and partly cloudy. The hills today were relatively lengthy but a nice gradient usually and the lower temperatures made them quite enjoyable. And the downhills are pretty good.Drank Coromandel beer - Easy Rider - which was one of those biscuity hoppy fruity things. Brewed in Coromandel Town.
About 40 miles, from Opoutere to Whaitanga (Harbourside Holiday Park). We discovered that you can go from Coromandel town to Auckland on a passenger ferry. zit takes, we were told by a man walking along the shore, bikes. The price is, according to their web site, about $50 dollars. So we are now doing the trip to Coromandel Town tomorrow with the idea of catching the late afternoon ferry. There's only one ferry on a Saturday. Today, after we finally paid and did indeed get the low carbon traveller discount (and not only are we cycling we're planting trees to offset the carbon of our plane flight here) we cycled the pretty delightful miles from Opoutere then along to Cook's Bay, where Steve swam in the dear old Pacific rollers (pretty small) and we saw where Captain Cook landed in order to measure the transit of mercury. Hence the bigger bay's name - Mercury Bay. Then we got a little passenger ferry that took us across to Whaitanga where we stopped cycling at about 5pm, a pretty early stop for us.People exclaim, just as they did in the USA about how tough it must be cycling. Of course, once your legs are used to it and the bike is mechanically sound it isn't particularly tough at all. I guess for a portly non-cyclist it would be a recipe for a heart attack but they just need to start small and work up to it. Don't think they'll bother. The weather today was perfect cycling weather - 24 degrees centigrade and partly cloudy. The hills today were relatively lengthy but a nice gradient usually and the lower temperatures made them quite enjoyable. And the downhills are pretty good.Drank Coromandel beer - Easy Rider - which was one of those biscuity hoppy fruity things. Brewed in Coromandel Town.