Driving down to Rotorua

Back from the dive trip I had to go with Kevin and Jamie to their place, where I completed the Nitrox diving certification. I gave Maria from the boat a ride to Whangarei, she was going to meet up with her girlfriends and return to Finland the following day.
We stopped by the Whangarei falls, I did not have too much expectations to the falls, as I had seen another one somewhere else that was only 1-2 meter tall, not that impressive. This one however was quite deep, it was a "real" water fall, I should probably have come here when I stayed in Whangarei anyways.
There were a few kids playing around the river, with some of them jumping from the tree. The kids were shouting out loud and it wasn't until I looked very closely at the entire tree that I saw a little dude standing up in the very top, ready to jump out. It was at least 15-20 meters up, a brave/stupid young man, haha
We continued to Whangarei where I kicked Maria out of the car, continue further on the hostel where I stayed the other day to pick up my deposit for the key, $20.
Finally on the way towards the Auckland, where I decided I could find a hostel and stay overnight, then I could also get my optical camera cable.
On the way to Auckland there was a traffic accident on the highway, so they had blocked the section of highway. There was a detour, which on my GPS looked very long, after 30 seconds the road became a gravel road and the GPS said it was going to continue for 13km! It wasn't a straight road, it went through a couple of gorges and canyon, serpentine roads for 13km, nice.
The road wasn't really wide, but really dusty and it was almost impossible to see anything in front of me, as the sun was very low on the sky too. A couple of near misses with the canyon walls and other oncoming cars, really tense driving.
I think Kiwis are some of the best drivers in the world, they don't care if they are driving on gravel or paved roads, almost the same speed. When the car starts to swerve a little, they just correct it and continues without slowing down. Even old grandpas with soft hats, haha
I finally made it to Auckland and was hungry so I found a Thai restaurant that looked authentic. Well, they looked more Chinese than Thai, but the guy kept assuring me he was Thai, haha. I ordered a dish and asked for it to be hot, he laughed and said that it would be very strong and if I was sure I could handle it? I laughed at him and told him just to make it hot, not to worry. When I got the food he was smiling and probably expecting me to start crying. It was only very little spicy, so when he came back and proudly asked if it is was spicy enough, I said no and asked him to stop by with some fresh chopped chili. I got some dried chilis which had been soaked back to life and was as close to fresh chili as they could get. I emptied the little bowl and when he picked up my plate after dinner, he was amazed, even he didn't eat it that spicy, haha
After dinner I continued towards Thames where I found there were some hostels I could stay at. I came there close to 23:00 and of course all the hostels in the small city was closed already. No check-in after 18 or 20, so what to do now? Well, time to test the car for overnight sleeping, couldn't be that bad, right? Well, it was. I and getting too old and comfortable to sleep in a car, I would happily pay for a nice bed, shower and a real toilet.
Next morning I had to look up on the GPS for a public toilet, kind of surprised that I found one, haha
Now that it was light, I could finally see what kind of area I was in. The coast line offered a pretty cool drive again, with multiple bays and cliffs making it quite a work to drive around.
There were plenty of interesting canyon drives too, making the ride quite interesting and not very fast, but a quite funny drive, haha
I have discovered so far that the Kiwis put a lot of effort into showing how fast you can go around a corner, lots of 25, 35, 45 and 55 signs on a snarly road with a speed limit of 100 kmh. Interestingly enough, so of the signs are very conservative where others are kind of aggressive. So I had to change the setting on the GPS to zoom in a lot and use that one to judge how fast the next corner would be. That was after a few too interesting cornerings, haha
My route took my past Hot Water Beach, which supposedly has some thermal outlets close to the beach which makes the water on the beach warm. I had to stop and see that for myself, sounded interesting.
I found the beach and took a walk along the beach to where everyone else was laying or sitting.
After 20 minutes of searching for hot water I gave up, the water was just cold, everywhere. There were only people in the water in wetsuits, maybe that was a good sign to get moving to somewhere else. Quite disappointed I went back to the car and found a map of where the thermal hot water is supposed to be, and that was where I had already been. Not impressed.
The view offered was quite good though, but I was too busy driving that I didn't get too many pictures. Today's drive was going to take me around the Coromandel peninsula, down through the Eastern coast line towards the Bay of Plenty and Mount Maunganui.
I had put an ad on one of the boards with my plan and if there was anyone who needed a ride with similar plans. Two guys from Chile had responded and I just wanted to go and meet them and talk about the next couple of weeks.
The ended up having quite similar plans, so we agreed to meet again on the South Island as they were already heading south to Wellington the next day and I still had some stuff to do on the North Island.
On the way out of  Mount Maunganui, I picked up two girls hitchhiking, they were only going to the next town, some 20 min away. They were 25 years old Czechs working in New Zealand in a kiwi farm, to make money enough to stay. Dropped off the girls and continued to Rotorua,where I was going to stay for the night. The city was a little more touristic than what I had been used to the last couple of cities, there was actually a few restaurants and bars open after 17 o'clock. Asked the lady at the hostel for a good place to eat and she referred me to a bar called The Pig and the Whistle. I ordered some lamb dish with high expectations, but it was the biggest disappointment ever. Expensive and no taste at all, none whatsoever.
Felt so sorry for myself I had to buy some chocolate to get in a good mood again.