We went to an underwater world attraction for the morning, where I got pissed off 'cause I discovered the camera batteries had gotten loose and caused all the settings I'd fine tuned to revert back to default. So most of the photos from the underwater world will be Mel's.

Getting out of Auckland wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There were signs pointing the way to the motorway, which was JUST what I needed. The drive from Auckland to Coromandel Peninsula was relatively boring, but once we got onto the peninsula and followed the coast around, everything became suddenly beautiful. The coastline was incredible, and it was awesome following it around. I got some good photos along the way. There was one point we saw a cave across a small bay, so we stopped and went for a walk to look at the cave. The cave wasn't worth the walk, as it only went in a few feet, but the walk was a nice distraction from the driving. We stopped for fish and chips in Coromandel Town, which was nice, and while there we booked a Whitianga glass-bottomed boat tour for tomorrow. Then we continued on to Whitianga, where we're staying for the next couple of days.

The backpackers is excellent - probably the best one we've stayed at so far. There's a bunch of oldish ladies, in their 40s through to their 70's here tonight, and they were having a great time. It's 11:16pm now, and thank God they've gone out to party somewhere else, 'cause they were making a helluva racket.

More later.