KEY POINTS:
The hot mineral springs at Miranda Holiday Park can take years - decades - off your age.
I know this because just the other weekend I spent a couple of hours soaking in the marvellous hot, sulphury water of the holiday park pool and lost, oh, 25 years.
This miracle was revealed when I finally steeled myself to abandon the pool's comforting embrace for the chill westerly wind and told 3-year-old grandson Jamie it was time to get out.
An elderly couple who were in the pool with us told Jamie, who had been chatting away to them about holidays and the meaning of life, "Go to your Daddy, dear."
"I'm not the father," I explained, "I'm the grandfather. I don't think I could cope with being a father at my age." "Oh," said the woman, and then commented to her husband, "He looks young enough to be the father."
After that, how could I not enjoy Miranda? And there is plenty to enjoy.
The area is probably best known for the Miranda Hot Springs complex, and when I peered over the fence it did look like a fun place, with a big pool where teenagers were frolicking, a smaller, hotter pool where their parents were quietly soaking, private spa pools for romantic couples and a nice little paddling pool for toddlers.
But the pool for guests at the holiday park next door, where we were staying in a comfortable chalet, was to my mind even better, nicely designed to allow guests to swim, soak, play with kids or sit in one of the many alcoves and read a book, and best of all it's free, so a family staying at the holiday park can save itself around $50 a day in admission charges.
The other star attraction in the area is the marvellous Miranda Shorebird Centre, focal point of the food-rich shores of the Firth of Thames, which provide wintering grounds for 10,000 bar-tailed godwits, 6000 red knots and smaller numbers of other Arctic species, as well as vast numbers of local birds like wrybills, oystercatchers, dotterels, spoonbills, herons, stilts, rails, gulls, cormorants, egrets, bitterns, shovelers, kingfishers and plovers.
I've been there many times and it's always a delight to visit the centre, with its excellent educational displays about birds and information about what species are currently resident, and then to explore the nearby shores, especially at high tide, when you can see huge flocks of birds wheeling about, or resting on shellbanks waiting for their tidal flat restaurant to open again.
Of course it's not only the birds that appreciate this area as a food source. Kaiaua Fisheries are justly famous for their award-winning fish and chips and as we drove past the place was, as usual, thronged with people enjoying the sun and a good feed.
But this time we decided to eat at the Bayview Hotel next door and it was great too. I enjoyed an excellent chicken burger, a nice pint of Speights, an exciting Warriors' game on the TV and, for four adults and two children, the food cost less than $50.
There's plenty of other activities to enjoy in the area. Walks along the coast or in the Waharau, Tawhitokino, Tapapakanga, Whakatiwai and Hunua Ranges regional parks; checking out the whimsical pottery creatures at The Dragon's Nest Pottery in Waharau or the kiwiana at the old Country Store in Waitakaruru; chipping oysters off the rocks almost anywhere along the coast or buying pots of them at Clevedon Oysters, just north of Kawakawa Bay.
But for this trip I didn't do any of those things. The mirror suggested my years were starting to come back. So Jamie and I went for another soak in the miraculous pool at the holiday park.
More information
See familyparks.co.nz.
