Clairy was very taken with the many abandoned old farm houses that littered the landscape.
We reached the Kawhia Harbour Road and the view stretched off for miles.
We found the 'sheep departure lounges' endlessly fascinating. I couldn't help imagining them flying off the end of the ramps in to the distance.
These chaps all legged it into the farm building when Clairy approached them.
We were still in the limestone cave region, and some of the erosion looked fantastic.
Just on the outskirts of Kawhia we stopped to fill up on petrol, having nearly run out on the rural roads a couple of days previously where there petrol stations are sometimes hundreds of kilometres apart. The place was a bit of a jack of all trades encompassing a holiday park, restaurant, supermarket and gift shop. The multi-tasking attendant also fancied himself as a tourist guide for the area and took me inside to point out various interesting places. He showed me exactly where on ... beach we would need to dig to make make our own hot pool. We actually found ourselves much more excited by his second suggestion which was to go and see a local ladies pet eels!
We headed into town to the official tourist centre below.
Here we were met by a nice elderly lady, surrounded by a typically bizarre rural museum. She let us know that we would have to be on the beach at just the right time to experience the thermal pools. We said we were very interested in seeing the eels and handily they belonged to Beryl, who lived just down the road from her. She duly called Beryl, but found she was out on an open gardens jolly and we could try after 2pm.
We scoffed down yet more fush n' chups and managed to get our order in before what seemed like the whole town turned up to get some too. We then drove out to the beach. It had turned into a beautiful day and the dunes looked lovely against the wispy sky.
Clairy loved this spiky dune grass.
Down on the beach we were only the second couple down there. The first, a German pair, had already staked their claim and were digging like buggery. We spent some time trying to find a decent spot. The multi-talented petrol station chap had advised that the heat was very localised, differing hugely across just a couple of feet, so we wandered about digging our feet in to try and find a super hot spot.
Clairy snapped some nice pics.
Bingo! I found a reasonably hot patch and started digging. Obviously we didn't have any spades like the more organised types. I made do with my hands.
By this time the Germans had a colossal hot tub sized bath dug. We weren't quite so ambitious.
I wasn't quite satisfied with the warmish temperature of our current puddle so tried a few more areas. I also went and enquired with the Germans as to to how hot theirs was. They let me try it and on one side it was absolutely boiling!
I therefore asked if I could possibly nick their spades for a mo, and they generously agreed. We had been joined by various other people by this point, and some cheerful ladies offered me their proper garden spade, so I really got stuck in.
The problem with wet sand though is it just dribbles back in.
So fairly quickly I decided that would do, Clairy did help too mind! It was nice and toasty...and only a little stinky in a sulphurous way.
Oh bloody hell yeah. Lying in tiny heated puddle.
What a gorgeous girl.
Eventually we had had enough and I had to go for a quick swim in the very cold sea to cool myself down.
We climbed the dunes back to the car and headed off in search of some pet eels. The directions that the lady in the information centre had given us were spot on, right down to the boots nailed to the top of the garden fence and painted the same colour. We had done it. We had found Eeldorado!
Sadly when we went in, we were told by her partner that Beryl still hadn't returned from her open gardens morning, but that we could have a look ourselves. Slightly disappointed we wandered round the garden encountering one of the fattest dogs I've ever seen (more of him later) and some totally uninterested enormous billy goats, but could see no sign of the eels at all.
Possibly sensing our disappointment Beryl's partner reappeared with a huge can of the most revolting looking super cheap dog food and after quick stamp of the feet to get their attention dumped some of it out on the paving slap he was standing on.
And suddenly there they all were, slithering out from under the grown over river.
There was a huge number of them in a huge array of sizes. They were all over each other trying to get at the manky dog food.
A few of them were absolutely huge. Not that I would have wanted to, but I doubt I could have got me hands round this fella. He was positively verging on obese, possibly from all the manky dog food.
Clairy took this top notch vid of these incredible things. She even gives one a little stroke!
They still slithered around for some time hoping that some more might miraculously appear on the paving slab.
'Oh hi! I'm playing with the eels.'
And eventually it did. MMMmmm...more fatty meaty bits.
Feeding frenzy.
'Look...an eel'
Greedy buggers...
...speaking of which. Look at the size of this fella. Quite undeniably a culture of over feeding...and the dog as well, ahoho.
This was the real big daddy though. He reminded me of the new Airbus A380, or possibly a section of seriously overinflated inner tube.
Our host then returned with some chunks of meat on pieces of string, and muttered that this was something that he thought Beryl did when they had visitors. He handed me one and it was here that I really realised what a bite the slippery things could give you. They really grabbed on to the meat and thrashed around until they had got a chunk off.
Sadly this tiny thing thrashed around so much it snapped my string and it pegged it off with the whole lump the greedy bugger.
Sheer feckin brilliance. This is definitely an award winning photo. 'Does my bum look big in this?'. What beasts!
And that was that. We didn't get to meet the legendary Beryl but we were both insanely happy about having such a superbly bizarre close up encounter with her pets.
After leaving Kawhia we took the dirt road towards Raglan and encountered this nicely rustic pail-mail box.
Raglan didn't hold our interest for long though, so we drove on to Hamilton to get our camping stuff sent back home. It had served us really well and it felt strange to get rid of it, but we were rarely going to use it from this point onwards.
The only other reason we had for visiting Hamilton was due to something we had spotted in the lonely planet. Apparently local schoolchildren had unearthed a 2 metre high fossilised penguin, and it was now on display in the town museum. This was surely an opportunity not to be missed! So we duly saught it out, only to be told by a helpful if ultimately rather confused member of staff that it had been moved into storage and no we couldn't go into their archives to see it.
We took some piccies of their quite comical christmas decs.
Life in a bauble.
And god forbid, there's only a statue of the bloke from the crystal maze. Its Richard 'O' Brien in his Rocky Horror phase, as he wrote it while working in a hair dressers that used to be on this site. Random.
And a brick caravan. Nice.
After Hamilton we headed for our final Top 10 Holiday Park at Port Waikato. It was a very funny little seaside town with almost nothing going on. We couldn't even find the shop. This meant we just had to get the fush and chups in once again. Oh the hardship.
We went and checked out the beach, apparently good for surfing.
Ominous clouds.
Then we slipped back to our tiny shed cabin and finally caught up with some of the huge amount of blogging that needed to be done.
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