Stretching summer

North: Mangawhai
By Jill Malcolm

It was Sunday and at the newly opened Smashed Pipi Cafe in Mangawhai groups of sybarites were gathered around the outdoor tables, shuffling their feet in the crushed-shell courtyard and turning their faces to the sun in attitudes of worship.

But they'd come here not to commune with the elements as much as to order breakfasts of eggs benedict or french toast with lashings of bacon, and to contemplate their good decision to break the city boundaries and drive 102km north.

Mangawhai was also a good choice for Barbara and Barry Hockenhull. With their three children they came here three years ago and built the modern Smashed Pipi complex, first opening the elegant gallery in which to display their own and their son's pottery and that of other local artists.

It was a bit of a punt, says Barbara. "But lucky for us Mangawhai has become popular for escapees from the city. We opened the bar and the cafe late last year and people have been pouring in ever since."

It's not the only foodie place in town. We dined at the cafe in the Naja Garden Centre among the potted palms and native grasses and at the excellent Sail Rock Cafe, where the biggest feast was the wordy menu.

I ordered wraps of finest smoked salmon encompassing a nucleus of lemon pepper and caper-bud scented cream cheese while flecks of peppered mackerel ran riot through the roulade nested atop locally sourced, fiery rocket leaves and a cooling cucumber and snipped chive salad. And that was only the entree.

But top taste in Mangawhai was the hand-crafted chocolates and pralines produced in a small factory.

It's not open for public inspection because Mary and Clayton Bennett are too busy turning out their exquisite product to entertain, but the chocolates can be bought at the Smashed Pipi and specialty chocolate outlets in Auckland.

The main attraction of the twin villages of Mangawhai and Mangawhai Heads, however, is not their gourmet offerings but their stunning settings close to beaches, estuaries and islands.

The small communities border a wide convoluted estuary, which is at first cluttered with mangroves but as it nears the sea becomes a wide channel defined by sandy margins and is suitable for gentle boating and swimming.

And facing the more vigorous open sea, the coastline has several beaches on which waves sparkle like crushed glass as they roll in against the biscuit-coloured sand to provide a perfect waterworld for surfers, boogie boarders and spirited swimmers.

The seaward arm of the heads is piled high with shimmering sand dunes, which offer sanctuary to three endangered shore bird species, and slightly inland is the golf course where the interest is in birdies of a different kind.

We played nine holes with Alan Griffiths, a Welshman, who once a year comes to Mangawhai with his wife and stays for three months. "This course is a gem," he says. "It demands accuracy but every hole is different. The setting is pretty, the members friendly and the play unpressured. You pay a lot for that sort of thing back home."

It's not just the golf course that brings them here. "We think Mangawhai's a great find," says Griffiths. "It's physically beautiful, there are great walks and beaches and if we're not playing golf we sometimes book a local charter boat and head for the Hen and Chickens Islands, which are only about 20 minutes away. Quite often we'll come back with a snapper or a kingi."

It is hardly surprising that accommodation at Mangawhai has mushroomed. We stayed at Milestone Cottages in a self-contained, earth-brick bungalow, which overlooked the estuary and cost $150.

But there is a wide range of B&Bs and camping grounds and cottages to suit most tastes and bank balances. After two short days I came home to Auckland with several souvenirs - two sandy towels, sunburned shoulders, a heel blister made by my golf shoe and, from the Smashed Pipi Gallery, a ceramic mushroom and a box of Bennetts' chocolates wrapped meticulously in fine, white tissue paper.

South: Waitomo

Dita De Boni

If you're looking for an escape from Auckland that might just as well qualify as an escape from the past two decades of progress in the service industry, consider a weekend away in the lush hillsides of Waitomo.

That's not to say it's all bad in the minuscule, glow-worm-infested township just south of Otorohanga.

In fact, it's nice to get away from Auckland's occasionally sterile, overly efficient style of hospitality and get back to the way things were done before rush-hour traffic and text-messaging made their mark and to hark back to the days when lamingtons and sausage rolls were staple foods, lino was king, and only three people in the country had cable TV.

Gavin and I arrived mid-afternoon Saturday in Waitomo, booking into the basic Glow-worm Motel - "The closest to the caves!" - for $60 a night each. There was certainly nothing to do at the motel, so we jumped in the car for a short reconnaissance with the area, stopping first at the Big Apple tea rooms.

The place was deserted and our waitress was unable to tell us anything about the district, nor about the average Saturday night's excitement, and capped it by being unable to spell Waitomo on our receipt.

It wasn't a good start, although at the end of our coffees she gave us the cheeriest "See ya!" one could imagine.

As dusk fell, we decided to check out the Waitomo Hotel, which is a beautiful building atop a hill overlooking the central village.

The hotel has real potential - overtly historic, stylish in a rococo manner and boasting a magnificent view.

Unfortunately, it is garishly furnished, somewhat rundown, and the main feature of its once grand lounge is a mammoth-screen TV.

We had a pleasant meal in the dining room - he had the beef, I had the lamb - and struck a chatty waitress who informed us the hotel was built sometime in the early 20th-century and was therefore "well over 100 years old".

She also spoke of a ghost that did strange things to the hotel's sound system but seemed unconvinced when Gavin proffered that speakers hailing from the 1950s might possibly be the cause of the disturbance.

After dinner, we descended the hill and stopped by the Waitomo Tavern, which was busy with a swag of British tourists from a local campsite and the odd, and in some cases odd, local.

One approached this reporter to suggest she resembled Dolly Parton, but generally the mostly male customers were glued to the second week of Super 12 rugby, proving once more that wherever New Zealand men are during rugby season, city or country, 15 hulking, pixellated sportsmen are more alluring than even one real member of the opposite sex.

The next morning, we were greeted by a fine day and decided we could not escape Waitomo without a visit to the caves and glow-worms.

For $24 a person, the 40-minute trip through cave and grotto is a little steep.

Certainly Gavin and his friend thought so, feeling doubly cheated to learn the incandescent worms are, in fact, maggots, although they had a good laugh when all the cave lights went out (suspiciously, they were standing next to the master switch at the time).

I think the experience is one worth having periodically, as the caves and the worms do seem to possess a mystical quality, much like the area itself.

On the way back, the angora rabbit shearing centre and the museum of caves almost beckoned, and, of course, there is always jet boating, black-water rafting, and horseriding to keep a visitor occupied.

In other words, much more than glow-worms and caves are to be found in Waitomo, delivered, somewhat incongruously, in the style of times past.

West: Kaipara to South Head

By Tim Watkin

It's Friday night and we're turning our backs on a working week that's still yabbering and pleading behind us. We're taking Maurice Gee's advice and going west.

We grab some takeaways and a change of clothes, then head for the north-western. The traffic has cleared but the weather hasn't so, with windscreen wipers flapping, we abandon the neon and head for the end of the motorway.

There the deep night waits, staring back from the darkness. We turn left and drive through hard rain and gentle Kumeu, escaping.

Piha and Karekare aside, Aucklanders don't typically think of the west coast when it comes to getting away from the city, which is all the more reason to head that way when you're looking for a weekend away from it all.

We're headed for the mighty Kaipara, the largest inland harbour in the Southern Hemisphere and, on its southern reaches, a little over an hour from the city. Our aim: exploring the lesser-travelled limb of land out to South Head.

If you're seeking solace from the city's pressures, a good first stop is one of the two hot pools at Parakai. We opted for the grandly titled Aquatic Centre and, in its hot water, the week seeped away, as did the years. The centre is a rare specimen of an earlier era, much like the municipal baths, with its concrete block walls, louvre windows and chipper rows of yellow and blue pennant flags.

When it comes to laying down your weary head, there is a good handful of charming B&Bs on offer around Helensville and beyond, including Kaipara House and Frech Orchards, and even a motor camp at Parakai for the tent-inclined.

Trundling round the peninsula the next morning, it became clear the darkness wasn't casting an illusion of emptiness over the land. In daylight, there's little moving on the roads and hillsides.

We drive down to the aptly named Shelly Beach. There we walk along the shore watching the birds and the sea as wide and still as the sky. The hills are stretched out nearly flat, as low and as slow as a conversation in these parts.

The city is a false memory, a myth.

At the end of the peninsula, when the air force isn't dropping bombs nearby, you can take a variety of walks through Woodhill forest or just head to the lagoon at the end of the dirt road. A great picnic spot and lovely in its remoteness.

If walking through nature's bounty isn't your thing, you can try eating it at MacNut macadamia farm and cafe, New Zealand's third-largest planting of the nut that really is the hardest to crack. You can wander through the orchards and by ponds, or just sit and eat macadamia-flavoured anything. The brownies are divine.

Back at the toe of the peninsula, Helensville is a sleepy mix of rural service centre and knick-knack heaven, strung out low like the hills, along the Kaipara river.

It might just have been the shocking quiet after the city, but the town boasts the loudest money machine I've ever come across. It also boasts mouthwatering bacon. At the Cafe Regent, in the town's old theatre, they serve the best corn fritters and smoked bacon this side of paradise.

And round the back is John Perry's Secondhand Land, a greater store of kiwi miscellanea you couldn't hope to find - a jumble of tea towels, rugby match programmes, whisky glasses, walking sticks and even a tiki-decorated kayak.

If you have time, you can cast off from the town and cruise up the harbour on a do-nothing, see-everything boatride. Then cruise slowly back towards town, as the surroundings begin to refill with movement and noise. Stop at vineyards, such as Matua and Cooper's Creek, for a taste or two before returning to the city regathered and replete.

East: Flaxmill Bay

By Diana Balham

Most of us have a favourite place in the Coromandel. Yours might be Pauanui, the playground of the fabulously comfortable, or maybe you prefer the enduring hippiness of Coromandel township, on the west side of the peninsula.

Mansions versus housetrucks - it's a region that has been colonised by urban holidaymakers and those deeply intense, young, yoghurt-makers for decades.

Flaxmill Bay happily falls somewhere between the two. It is a small bay a kilometre from Ferry Landing, about five minutes across the water from Whitianga by passenger-only ferry, or 2 1/2 hours by car via Tairua.

The bay is cuddled by cliffs on either side. There's a delightful, safe and sandy beach and, in general, it is so quiet and undeveloped you can pretend it's still the 70s.

As the name suggests, the bay is the site of an old flaxmill, but these days a fairly sleepy motor camp, a small restaurant/cafe and some really special but laidback accommodation with a historic farmhouse and renovated cottages and outbuildings are about the only things you'll find. Homestead Park Resort is perhaps ill-named, because it's as different from the frenetic "let's all have organised fun" atmosphere of a Club Med as you could find. Great for a relaxing weekend away from the madding crowd.

Pretty though Flaxmill Bay is, the real gem in these already precious parts is Lonely Bay, the next cove around.

With any luck, once you've kayaked there or slithered down the steep track from the Captain Cook lookout (where he looked out to sea and came up with the name Mercury Bay, apparently), you'll get the opportunity to be lonely.

It's one of the most glorious white-sand, turquoise-water, pohutukawa-fringed beaches in the Coromandel, but it's not that accessible to the unadventurous or child-laden holidaymaker.

Swimming in the safe waters, settling down with a good book or just gazing around you are all recommended activities here. The expanding summertime borough of Cooks Beach is out of view. Relax, damn it!

If you fancy a bit of exercise with your vegetating, you could cycle down to Hahei Beach (about 12km) and join the throngs walking to Cathedral Cove.

A bit of effort is required, and it's an hour or so up hill and down dale, but fabulous views are promised, and the bay and rock formations are spectacular when you get there. Trouble is, it looks a bit like Blackpool beach on a busy day, without the amusement pier.

If you venture from Flaxmill Bay in the other direction, you'll be on foot post-ferry crossing unless you drive the long way round to Whitianga. But it's quite a pleasant town to stroll around. You can eat deliciously fresh fish and chips on Buffalo Beach, which takes its name from a ship that plied the waters in days gone by.

Back at base camp, it's very pleasant to spend the evening sitting on "your" beach and enjoying the sound of silence, except for the odd quack and the measured lapping of baby waves on the shores. Drink in the memory.