van wyk journeys 
+22, sunny with periodic clouds, light winds.
We have completed our tour of the northern part of the North Island and are starting to explore the central part of the island. Today we are heading to Coromandel with very few stops along the way. This will be more of a dialogue of things that occurred along the way.
The first big discovery was that New Zealand does have straight roads with shoulders and more than one lane. We discovered this going south in the direction of Hamilton. Boy, the fence posts alongside the road roared by, for a while, I thought we might be in Saskatchewan. The hills and distant mountains said otherwise, no not Alberta, there is still snow on those hills and mountains and these are still green.
Soon we turned off in the direction of Coromandel via Thames, yep Thames, not the one in the UK although it is on the Firth of Thames. Driving continued at a rapid pace until we came to Thames and the road beyond. But first a stop at McDonald’s for coffee, yes we have been drinking coffee at McDonald’s, not the New Zealand cafes, yes Mickey D’s coffee, and that’s because… they have free wi-fi, yes free and a good connection wi-fi. We thought, okay we assumed that not only coffee and wi-fi would be good all around New Zealand but we had no idea that it would not be at the motels we stayed at or the elusive cafes but good old MD’s. But a neat thing we saw in Thames was at a McDonald’s in a mall, the one we stopped at for wi-fi and of course coffee, the neat thing was an MD’s drive-through as part of the mall.
Along the drive to Coromandel, we saw signs along the roadside that said: “no more mines” which left us puzzled about what this referred to. Our motel was a short distance from town so we walked into town for dinner. On our walk, we came across a sign that gave a partial explanation. It seems there was a time when life was not good in the gold mines and leaders of the miners wrote in objection and protest to make working conditions better by having abusive managers replaced. Well, the story is not complete as of this writing, mining continues, although it does not seem that any deep shaft mines have been drilled, but I could be wrong.
We enjoyed steamed mussels for supper. We were there on a Saturday and found it unusual that a lot of the stores such as the hardware stores and pharmacy are closed on Saturday.
The owners of the motor lodge offered their deck for us to sit out on in the evening. Stunning views!
Updated March 8, 2017
We saw on the news that there was flash flooding, closed roads, and slips as they call them here (small landslides) in the area that we left 3 days ago in Coromandel. Some roads are closed and impassable, these are ones that we drove on.