Wet weather at Mount Maunganui campground. Photo / Andrew Warner
The weather hasn't changed, but how we find out about it has.
When rain rolled into the Coromandel on New Year's Day, my family immediately made the call to end our summer camping trip, two days early.
Packing up our wet tent, two soggy children and bone-dry hangovers, we hit
the road back to Auckland. Thousands of others did the same thing.
It wasn't always like this. In seasons past, Kiwi campers would shrug off the first droplets of rain, fire up their inner optimism and flick on the radio to check the weather report at the top of the hour.
Hmm. Let's see what the next weather update says in a few hours' time, then we'll make a call on whether we stay or go. Eventually, campers had had vested so much in sticking around that they had to stick it out.
