Our delicious continental breakfast was served to our rooms at 8am, and we were packed up and in our bus just after 9.

We left Thames and drove a short distance to Karangahake Gorge, where Luke had researched a walk though the railway tunnel and a disused gold mine site. It was very scenic and reasonably flat…..and a one and a half hours’ round trip!

From there we drove to Matamata for our Hobbiton movie set tour. As it didn’t start until 2pm, we stopped in the town centre to visit the Information Centre and have lunch. Our last family holiday together in 2016 to Victoria involved pies and sausage rolls for lunch every third day, so we nostalgically found a bakery/pie shop which had yummy bargain pies. This was also the site of today’s unnecessary expense: 50c for little containers of tomato sauce! (And I had two left over because some kids were so disgusted by the price they refused them!)

The Hobbiton tour was expensive but very worthwhile, even for the three members of our group who haven’t seen any of the movies. (We did have fun watching Aunty Beck nod along like she knew what scenes they were talking about!). It was a two hour tour that walked past 44 hobbit holes and set pieces and ended with a free beer or ginger beer in a replica Green Dragon Inn.

It was an hour’s drive from there to our accommodation in Rotorua. We quickly unpacked and drove on to a dodgy part of town to The Factory Smokehouse, a restaurant we had read about online that had excellent reviews. We were craving a steak, but it turned out to be homemade burgers – they were delicious, and while the decor reflected the suburb more than the food, the meals were the North Island’s answer to Fergburger.

Our accommodation, which we booked based on the excellent reviews, is spacious but has MANY problems….no sheets or blankets for four of the beds, inferior aircon, and NO plug for the kitchen sink to name a few!! I feel a polite letter of complaint coming on…..

We had cereal and milk from the little supermarket at our holiday park, and boarded the bus to drive to Cathedral Cove. Luke insisted his research had discovered an easy 30 minute walk, but the reality was slightly different! I voted down the free parking at the opposite end of the town and made the boys pay $15 for parking at the walk entrance – we listed it as our “unnecessary expense of the day” (*) but everyone later agreed it was well worth paying!

(Minus one photographer, Aunty Beck)

The walk to Cathedral Cove was written on signs as 45 minutes each way (even with my arthritic knees I got there in 30mins), but there were several stairs and undulating hills along the way! It was well worth the hike though, and everyone left with some beautiful photos.

We stopped for lunch at a popular little cafe in Hahei before returning to Hot Water Beach. The tourist attraction there is to dig your own thermal pool, which can only be done either side of low tide, which today was at 2.53pm. As we had checked out of the Top 10 holiday park there this morning, they agreed to let us return to hire spades and we took them down to Hot Water Beach.

The kids had a ball there digging their own hot spring, but found they couldn’t stand in the water for too long because it was too hot! The underground hot springs filter up through the sand between high and low tides. It was amazing to see the steam coming off the sand so close to the freezing cold ocean water!

We then took the long and windy road (Zac LOVES windy roads 😩) across to Coromandel township where we stopped for fruit for afternoon tea (no one complained!) and then drove the scenic coastal road down to Thames, our stop for the night. We discovered a gorgeous little waterfall off the track along the way, and it was only a 3minute walk each way to get there!

And just to prove that Aunty Beck and I were there as well…….(but not as keen to climb yet another rock face)…..

Our accommodation here is a couple of lovely chalets built into the side of a hill, with beautiful views from our bedroom windows. We tried to eat at the local bistro which came highly recommended for dinner, but they couldn’t fit us in! The local Thai restaurant a few doors down was able to house us though. Mental note: when there is 13 of us, we need to consider booking ahead if we want to eat out!

* Grandpop shared his diary with us from our trip 20 years ago before we left, and on every page he had a “bargain of the day”. Tim’s favourite was a $15 T-shirt Grandpop picked up for $14 🙄😂, so Ross and Luke’s response to that was to list an anti-bargain of the day 😆

The party of 8 became a party of 13 today. We met “the cousins” at the airport and flew to Auckland. We were too tight to pay for seat selection, but discovered at check-in that we had all been seated together, yay!

For the first time in five years, Zac managed to survive a flight without vomiting with anxiety, which made a good flight even better for the rest of us. Once through customs, Beck and I fed the kids McDonalds for lunch (at the local time of 3pm) while Ross and Luke went to the depot to pick up our 15 seater bus.

A long drive was then underway as we headed straight for the Coromandel Peninsula and our destination for the night. Many country towns along the way but not many dinner options! We found a little town called Tairua which had two “restaurants”…..a generous term perhaps…..an unpatronised sushi shop where even the staff were hiding out the back, and a fish and chip shop with a parade of interesting customers! Ross and Luke were hungry as they hadn’t had anything since coffee before our morning flight, but for the rest of us a simple toastie was enough.

We arrived at our accommodation well after dark and were happy to settle in to our three villas quite quickly. The touring starts in earnest tomorrow!