Tefas - Christmas in Coromandel

Christmas in Coromandel

05.00 the alarm woke us up on the 24th of December. Merry Christmas! All you could hear was tropical bird sounds and all you could see was the super bright moon. Except for this, it felt like the whole world was still asleep. We packed everything in to the car really fast before we headed to Cathedral Cove to see the sunrise.

And yes, as you see, we saw the sunrise but it didn't go exactly according to the plans. When we got to the great outlook we realized it came a lot of smoke out of the engine and that this must have been the reason it smelled like salami the whole way to the coves. But we were hungry and didn't really feel like wasting this sunrise on car mechanics so we brought our water tank, our stove and our oats and went for a breakfast hike and left the car smoking in the carpark.

Here I spent the most beautiful of christmas mornings I've ever had. My upcoming christmases will have horribly big shoes to fill after this.

Okey, so we realized we couldn't escape reality anymore so we walked back to the car and realized that the cooler system was weak and that we were out of battery. Once again, Merry christmas! People on the carpark gathered around us to help out and together we managed to get the car to work. So, we went to the beach, read our books and looked at these massive coves.

Cathedral cove is a really beautiful place and also called "crowded" by the Kiwis, but really crowded in New Zealand is just a whole other thing than crowded in Europe or South america. We were almost alone on the beach.

When the sun got too strong we went to Hot water beach to dig our own hotsprings in the sand. Since you can only find the hot water on a very small area this place were actually crowded and not too impressive. The water wasn't warm enough in our hole and every once in a while the deadly cold sea water found its way in to our pool.. This surfer dude and his friends helped us keeping the sea water away but failed and we got too cold and sandy so we had to wash ourselves in the sea.

On our way to the car I put my feet in the sand and got burned. I realized my disappointment according the hot springs was only based on the too cold water in pur pool but now I found a really hot one. A too hot one. Isn't it crazy how you can find natural hot springs on the beach?

We got dressed and set off to Coromandel Town and stopped to say hello to some pigs chilling on the road.

We found our campsite in Coromandel town, showered for free (!!) and started celebrating christmas eve. I got to buy my chocolate santas and after that it was christmas for real. We ended the day by eating real food and we all sat quiet crying while we were eating. NEVER have a pizza been that delicious. Thinking about it still gives me goosebumps.

After dinner we (once again) got a heart attack from the car that didn't want to start but after some engineering from my side (oh let's pretend) we could go back to our campsite and fall asleep to french rap music.

This upside down christmas is not even comparable to a normal christmas in Sweden. Both things are amazing in so different ways.

Ok, last thing. WHAT A CHAOTIC CHRISTMAS DAY!! We drove towards Rotorua and all of the sudden the car broke down after a big up hill. The cooler system was boiling and the car was just telling us softly that it wanted to die. We stood there and realized we were fucked. No workshops are open on christmas. In the middle of our grieving a car stopped and two men and a boy came out to help us. They told us with nice words how insanely bad our car was feeling and told us to come to some kind of property they had where we could camp for the night and get the car serviced the day after. After a 10 minute drive and a cooked engine the man told us "I don't know what you call it, but in New Zealand we would say... You're fucked". He offered us to buy another car from him, we got it down to 740 and then we burned the other one. We got to stay in his work house for the night and this was just the weirdes and luckiest and unluckiest moment at the same time. What a christmas..