Miranda to Auckland City private car — Jakub's holiday

The air in Miranda, on the western side of the Firth of Thames, always has that damp, salty tang, even on a clear September morning. It was just after nine when I pulled up to the little motel. The motel owner had pointed me to the room number. I waited, the engine humming a low tune, watching the spring sun glint off the Firth of Thames. A man emerged, not quite what I expected. He was younger, maybe late twenties, with a serious expression, dark hair a little too long, and carrying a compact, well-worn backpack. He looked like he’d spent more time in libraries than on beaches.

Jakub K. He’d booked through the website, a last-minute request after his plans for a guided tour of the Coromandel had fallen through. He mentioned something about wanting to see some of the less-visited spots, not just the tourist hotspots. I loaded his bag into the boot. We set off, heading south on SH25, then east towards the Coromandel Peninsula. The reason for his late change of plans, it turned out, was that the guided tour company had folded. He was resigned, but there was a flicker of determination in his eyes. He hailed from Prague, he told me, an architect by profession, here on a three-week exploration of New Zealand, a long-held dream. This part of his trip was supposed to be a deep dive into the natural beauty of the Coromandel, before heading towards Rotorua.

The drive from Miranda, cutting across the peninsula towards the eastern coast, is always a pleasant one in September. The light is soft, the roadside verges starting to get a bit more green, hinting at the coming summer. We drove through small towns like Kopu, then through the winding roads of the peninsula, with glimpses of blue water appearing through the trees. Jakub was quiet for a long stretch, watching the landscape unfold. He’d brought a small sketchbook with him, and I saw him occasionally making brief annotations, perhaps noting building styles or geological formations. He asked about the history of some of the old mining towns, which I was happy to share. I’d driven this route hundreds of times, and had picked up a fair bit of local lore along the way.

He’d originally planned to spend a couple of days exploring the beaches and the forests, but with his original arrangements cancelled, and now relying on just me, we had to condense things. His flight out was in a week, so the Coromandel leg was now a single journey, a taste rather than a deep immersion. I suggested we head towards Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. He seemed pleased, and it was a relief to me too, as these were places I knew were accessible and worth seeing, even without the full multi-day plan.

At Hot Water Beach, the tide was starting to go out, revealing the sand ready for digging. Jakub walked down to the shore, his architect's eye scanning the contours of the sand, the way the water receded. He didn't dig a pool himself, but observed the other people doing so, lost in thought. It was on the drive back out towards the main road, with the late afternoon sun beginning to cast long shadows, that he opened up a little more. He talked about how he found the structured planning of architecture to be both satisfying and, sometimes, limiting. He was drawn to New Zealand, he said, by its wild, untamed landscapes, and the way nature had shaped its forms. He confessed he found the vastness, the sheer scale of it, a contrast to the more contained, historic beauty of Europe. He was looking for inspiration, for a different way of seeing, and he felt that perhaps he was finding it, fleetingly, in the vastness of the Pacific.

As we continued our journey back towards Auckland, the light began to fade into a soft grey. The Hauraki Plains stretched out to our west, and the distant Kaimai Ranges were just silhouettes against the darkening sky. Auckland City was still a good couple of hours away, and I knew we’d be heading into late evening traffic. I remembered a place near Ngatea where I usually stopped for a decent coffee and a quick bite, and we pulled in there, the warm lights of the small shop a welcome sight. Jakub bought a pasty, and we ate in companionable silence, the low hum of the highway traffic just audible. He seemed content, the initial seriousness replaced by a quiet thoughtfulness. The Coromandel, for most, is about beaches and sunshine. For Jakub, it seemed to be about scale, about the raw elemental forces that shaped the land, a different kind of discovery.

The final stretch into Auckland was exactly as expected – busy, full of brake lights and the distant glow of the city. I dropped him at his hotel in the CBD just on 9 pm. He thanked me, his handshake firm. He still had that quiet intensity, but I think he’d found a sliver of the inspiration he was looking for in the stark beauty of the coast, even in its less hospitable, late-autumn guise.