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After leaving the Hunua Ranges (just beautiful) and being in the bush for a few days, we decided to head to the coast to catch some rays and rest 😉 This journey would be the first leg of our fantastic Coromandel Trip!
‘The coast between Kaiaua and Miranda is wild and open and stunning. The vast salt marshes attract thousands of migratory wading birds for summer every year, and a bright white shell bank chenier plain rims the shoreline...’
KAIAUA
Our first point of call was the small town called Kaiaua. Hard to pronounce, and although we try we often fail (ki-o-wa). When we arrived it was a scorching hot day so we headed straight for the campsite right next to the water; Hauraki Rail Trail Terminus.
As you can see this campsite is stunning and we chose to stay for two nights. We were blown away by the sheer number of seabirds, especially around dusk, that were feeding metres away from where we were parked. Especially white faced heron, known as kōtuku, there must have been 30 of them at one time. They call it the Seabird Coast for good reason!
The only negative to this camp spot was that it is not the best swimming beach. I did try and get it but it was too sharp on my feet!
The village of Kaiaua itself is only a few minutes walk away and doesn’t consist of much apart from a cafe, fish chip shop, gas station, and another camping spot at the NZMCA park.
RAY’S REST
Our next stop was literally a few minutes drive up the road to an awesome camp spot named Ray’s Rest! Arguably even more beautiful than the last stop. This is a very popular spot, and there is plenty of room for everyone to grab a waterfront spot.
Apparently the fishing is good here too, although we didn’t try, many campers were out on their boats at the time!
One thing we noticed pretty quickly, was that all of a sudden there were hundreds of very small flying insects in the van. We soon rolled down our custom door fly screens, albeit a bit too late.
We had previously tried and tried to look for some fly screens for our van but could not find any made over this side of the planet, until we found some from a family owned business in Aussie, ‘Bug Mesh Screens Oz!’
If you want to check-out these screens, email sales@bugmeshscreensoz.com.au with the make, model, year of your van and the windows/doors you want screens for. Be sure to quote SALTYSKIN in the subject line to receive a 5% discount!!
Our time at Ray’s Rest was spent lazing around and getting odd jobs done. Again the birdlife is amazing so make sure you go for walk.
Although once again, NOT a swimming beach here, I tried to get in but ended up sinking in the mud several times, and wading about 1 kilometre out before it got deep enough to swim!
PAEROA
Following our rest and relaxation we headed to the town of Paeroa for a quick visit. This town is the official birthplace of Lemon & Paeroa, New Zealand’s home-grown soft drink. We were sure to snap the obligatory photo of the giant L&P bottle!
We didn’t stay for long as we were on our way to meet our friends Russell and Di who lived nearby. We will be sure to visit Paeroa again as we sure there is lots to do in this area, we just didn’t have much time this trip around!
We ended up getting a little tipsy at our friends, eating lots of kai and learning how to play klubbs which is an awesome game!!
The next morning we all had the best fry up breakfast and then we headed off towards the Coromandel Peninsula…
