ca. 30 km
It was hard for us to leave this wonderful place. The marked bushwalk wiggles through a nice forest with big Kauri trees and many fern trees. We always thought of "Jurassic park" and waited for a dinosaur coming around the next corner.
But now we had to pass the Coromandel Range. Two possible roads from here, both steep and - at that time - with gravel surface. Roadworks were ongoing, and they are sealed recently. Uphill our back wheels lost grip on the gravel, so pushing the bike while walking was the only chance. The downhill section was worse, on the curvy road the bike slided inside the deep gravel, we had to keep extremely attention and to drive very slow. As we were on the main road to Kuaotunu, we found the sealed road again at the end of the steep downhill section. On recent maps you can see that the complete section of this road is sealed now.
Shortly after Matarangi, some excited teenagers talked to us, but we didn't get immediately what it was about. After driving on, people talked to us again, they are shouting something about "whales". And really, after watching the coastline with attention, our eyes catched a swarm of Orcas. They passed too quick for getting the camera ready, but how exciting! We were a bit scared to swim inside the ocean that evening.
