NZ 22 North - Waihi to Auckland

Tue. Feb. 20th, 2007: Waihi beach - Whangamata - Thames - Auckland.
Early morning at WHAIHI we started with a walk along Waihi beach - unfortunately today the weather is grey. Soon after we start to WHAIHI (old goldmining town, mine to be renewed, take the highway 25 northbound to WHANGAMATA, where we find a nice coffee at the 'Lazy Lizzard'. The winding road at Coromandel and the bad weather make us decide to cut our Coromandel trip crossing directly over to THAMES at the Coromandel westside. There we find along the beach a very narrow gauged railway (for children/club use), and a walkway through the mangroves to a bird watching station, where we could see lots of different NZ coastal birds. After that, some kilometres to the north, we visited an 'butterfly and orchid house' where we could see lots of fine butterflies in a tropically heated type of glass house. Then we started to return to Auckland along the highways (traffic increasing, the nearer we got to Auckland), to be in time when returning our car. Fortunately Hans Peter and Gerti could fetch us to their home, from where we had a nice evening bath at Long Beach and finally Gerti made our day with a 'welcome home'- dinner.