New Zealand on a Very Tight Budget Day 31

We must be running out of steam! That or the hot hilly walk and tumbling in the surf yesterday was more exhausting than it felt. Either way we are feeling very tired today and drove slowly up the coast pausing at Cooks Bay and the lovely Flaxmill Bay with its improbable overhang to Ferry Landing just a couple of hundred metres but a 25 kilometre drive to Whitianga (it is just a passenger ferry) . Whitianga was unremarkable but had some interesting historical context as it stands at the head or Mercury Bay, where Cook anchored to watch the Transit of Mercury. We did some very productive beachcombing, but it has been very breezy with quite a lot of cloud which was capable of turning the seascape from Tropical Paradise to moody Scottish Loch in the space of a minute so we didn't swim.
We crossed from the East to the West of the peninsular - not quite sure why I offered to drive at that point - on a spectacular windy and precipitous road with great views before camping up at an idyllic spot just north of Coromandel Town. It looks like there is plenty to see tomorrow.