I’ve just come back from a weekend in Kuaotunu. Where, you ask? I know, it’s a mission to find if you’re not from the ‘Mandel.
Many a satisfied customer has sat on this veranda, icecream melting down arm
Basically you head to the Kopu Bridge at Thames and turn right to get there via Tairua and Whitianga or left via Coromandel town. About an hour and a half later you arrive at a tiny seaside village with a hall, a fire station (which sounded its alarm for the volunteers to come running in the middle of the night), and the store, famous for its ice creams.
They seriously cannot be making any money out of these monstrous ice creams! One scoop is $2, but you can have two flavours in your one scoop cone (as I did). The Kauatunu Killer is a five-scoop ice cream in a double cone that costs $5 and is bigger than your head. Truly.
We had come back from the Whitianga Scallop Festival on this sunny afternoon and decided it was ice cream time. But the Killer is so big The Bloke was beaten by his five-scoops, although I’m told they sell at least one Killer a day. Definitely worth a stop – or even driving an hour out of your way.
Oh and you can walk along the beach to burn it off which nullifies the transgression.