CONFESSIONS OF A ONE-EYED, BIASED SOUTH ISLANDER

I’m the first to admit I’m a one-eyed, blinkered, biased South Islander whose magnetic centre is Central Otago, where I holidayed as a child, but a recent road trip around the Coromandel Peninsula forced me to concede that certain parts of the North Island actually do stack up against ‘my’ peaks, lakes and rivers.

In late spring, we free-wheeled around the Coromandel Peninsula in a luxurious, new, fully self-contained Britz motorhome, nicknamed ‘the Ritz’, fulfilling a yearning to explore more of our own Aotearoa treasures rather than seeking adventures offshore. Our aims were to discover roads less-travelled and tracks less-trod, freedom camping where possible. The latter proved to be the most challenging of the three. Beautiful beaches like Opito Bay and Otara Bay are off limits to freedom campers, even when your fully self-contained motorhome is equipped with state-of-the-art bathroom and kitchen facilities that leave no trace in the environment. Fortunately we were armed with brilliant Campermate and Roadtrippers Apps, which pointed us in the right direction.

Before heading up the west coast of the peninsula, we loaded up at Thames with enough