Sunday 10 March

Booms Flat DoC Campsite, Kauaeranga Valley, South Coromandel
At the moment this is about as far as it gets from the busy Commercial Campsite at Coromandel. I say at the moment, because we are a bit suspicious that some sort of a treasure hunt activity might be happening here this evening. There are nine DoC Campsites strung out along the Kauaeranga Valley and we took a look at all of them before settling on this one as seemed like the quietest. However we took a walk through the forest and came to one of the other sites were three guys were packing up a tent. I asked them what the signs we had seen pinned up, 'Liquor Ban in place' meant. They told is that the rules are that you can only drink alcohol of you are sitting down in one place, it is not allowed to walk around drinking. I laughed and said that it suited me fine, I only spill it if I walk around anyway and that I had been concerned that it meant no public drinking of alcohol. This lead to us hearing about how much they had consumed the previous night and that other people camping right across the other side of the campsite had complained about the noise. We noticed that they were pinning what looked like treasure hunt clues on trees. Now, back at our campsite, just before we left, three other blokes arrived and put up what seemed to be a small marquee, just across from us. I intended to ask them of they were part of the same group, but when we got back their car bad gone. I peeked inside the tent and it didn't look as if anyone was going to sleep in it, it was just a marquee. Suspicious. So we have moved our pitch as far away as we can, in fact to a much nicer place, walking around we found another branch of the same campsite, in a small copse and very secluded. So, here's hoping.
After leaving Coromandel this morning we drove down the west coast of the Peninsula as far as Thames. The road follows the line of the bays, each one packed with boat trailers and what appeared to be mostly holiday homes. We saw a couple of static caravan sites, and like some others we have seen, the caravans were packed in very, very close together. Never mind hearing your neighbours talk, you could probably hear them whisper.
At Thames we headed here, up the Kauaeranga Valley for a night in the forest before going further north tomorrow, through Auckland to Northland, for the final leg of our trip.