March 9 – 11, 2014
To travel is a wonderful thing, but it’s not generally easy or restful. There’s always too much to see in the time allotted, so choices, some of them difficult, need to be made along the way.
I was facing just such a choice after we returned to Tauranga from our road trip. It would have been nice to relax for awhile, but bad weather was due to arrive in the coming days; then we had friends coming to visit sometime in the following week or so. Since the nights were getting colder, we’d just purchased a space heater, a reminder that fall was on the horizon and our time in New Zealand getting shorter. I figured if we could fit in one more trip while before the weather system arrived, it would put is in a better position to wrap things up when we had good conditions again.
What could we do in two or three days? The Coromandel Peninsula would take a little longer than that, but if I broke that up into two trips, we could do the furthest reaches of it now and closer areas later, as day trips. With that, I got on Wot-If to look for a hotel deal in an area called Whitianga. When I found one, I approached Rich about it, not sure he’d be thrilled about another trip so soon. But he was agreeable; so I booked the hotel and made plans for us to leave the following morning.
Now the most intensive planning really began as I figured out how best to do things. As it happened, the two biggest sights needed to be done around low tide; so I had to plan our timing for those; then figure out how best to fit in other things nearby. Travel planning is like putting together a puzzle, and it always takes more time and work than one might think. Each round of planning brought up more questions that needed to be researched; so I worked on this off and on over the course of the day. Finally, I had a plan that would work out for us; the best news being that we didn’t have to leave until 9am.
This may seem like an unusual thing to be writing about, and normally I wouldn’t think to do it. But I met someone months later, a woman cruising with her spouse and children in New Caledonia, on whose shoulders it had fallen to plan family outings in this place where the language was French and travel information was not well laid out or even downright elusive. I was telling her about a small road trip Rich and I were doing there, and she wondered how I managed to pull it together. So I told her about sitting in front of the computer with whatever brochures I had, my Lonely Planet Guide, and then Google to hopefully answer my questions and map out our route. Sometimes I ‘d end up combing through other people’s travel blogs to get my answers (thank you travel bloggers) or use Google Street View to “drive” down a road and figure out where something actually was.
Bottom line: this type of planning takes more time and effort than it seems it should; but if you put in the work, the rewards are great. Thankfully during the years we’ve been cruising, this process has gotten much easier as Google has gotten better. Later I ran into my friend and she’d planned a similar outing, saying she just imitated me; sat in front of her computer with brochures and books and Google and pulled it together. I was happy this worked out and have to say this was one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever gotten.
Meanwhile, for this post, I have a round-up of the second-choice pics that didn’t make it into photo galleries from our previous trip down to Taupo, Tongariro, New Plymouth, and Waitomo. (You can click on any photo to enlarge.) –Cyndi
