New Zealand - Day 11

First day exploring the Coromandel Peninsular - fine beautiful morning and a MAGNIFICENT spread for breakfast awaited us. Not so good for me as the tummy wog was still making its presence felt but at least i was able to pick a few bits.
We planned to head north and reach the Cathedral Cove and hot water beach. There is no such thing as a straight road in NZ - constant curves, many with recommended speeds of 25 or 35kph are the order of the day so every trip is pretty demanding and quite slow.
We got to hot water beach about 11.30 and took a walk along what is a very nice beach. If you dig into the sand (shovels for hire everywhere) you will find hot water fills the hole. Sometimes scalding apparently.
About half an hour further on to Hahei where we followed the signs to the parking area for Cathedral Cove. Easy. Then found it was a huge walk through town and up numerous hills before the walk to the cove even started. Normally that would not worry us too much but after 5 days of not such a well-behaved stomach I found it was just not going to happen. Back into town to regroup and rethink.  Found there was another car park at the top of all that climbing but it was limited in spaces. The car park we had ended up in was the overflow Carpark and normally a shuttle bus would take you up to the start of the Cove walk but of course - the shuttle isn't working today! We drove up to the top Carpark 4 times during the afternoon but there was never a space vacant so sadly we never got to see the famous cathedral Cove.
We did, however, manage to call into Pananui on the way home which had a very good walk around a spectacular headland so that was good.
Had a fish (Elizabeth had STEAK!) Dinner at the Waihi Beach pub before getting back home about 8.
Good day apart from not seeing Cathedral Cove!