Thursday 25th January – Hot Water beach and Cathedral cove (warning - beach envy highly likely)

The new van is relatively comfortable.  That must be how Simon managed to sleep for over 13 hours!  Hence, we had a late start to the day and checked out late at noon.

We must be on the seabird coast, I think.... look, there's two here at least!

We headed east towards the Coromandel peninsula and Hot Water beach, learning rapidly that distances that appear short in New Zealand, often take longer to drive than you’d expect!  We stopped for lunch in Tairua on a lovely beach.

Tairua beach

We reached Hot Water Beach mid-afternoon.  Much of the North Island of New Zealand is a hot-bed, quite literally, of geothermal activity.  Here is one such example.  More than 2 km below the sands there is a reservoir of hot water and heated rocks.  The heat is a remnant of volcanic activity that occurred in the region between 5 and 9 million years ago. There are two springs on this beach, at 64° and 60°C respectively and you are invited to dig a shallow hole in the sand a couple of hours either side of low tide to enjoy the warm water.  We hadn’t factored any of this information for our visit, we just turned up when we did.  I could see how bathing in a warm water pool in the sand could be quite appealing in cooler weather.  But today was a scorcher, so apart from testing the water with our feet to say that we’d tried the experience (right) we opted for the cooler water in the sea!

Nevermind the hot water element, this beach was stunning anyway

We’d also struggled to find parking for our large van, so after a fleeting visit we were back on the road.  I’d recalled someone somewhere mentioning Cathedral Cove as a scenic place to visit so we thought we’d just go and have a quick look while we were in the area.  But it turns out that our lack of research had let us down again.  It is not as simple as driving straight there.  You either have to reach the cove via a boat or by taking a shuttle bus which takes you to the top of the hill nearby, but it is still a 45-minute walk down to the cove from there!  This is where our delays yesterday have let us down.  Being so late in the day we had to do a shorter walk to a couple of the other scenic bays as we didn’t have time to reach Cathedral Cove and return in time for the last bus back to the camper at 6pm.  AND there were signs indicating some good snorkelling trails here, making us feel that we were missing out by not spending a whole day here.

The lookout at the beginning of the Cathedral Cove trail - we definitely should have allotted more time here!

Just a beautiful flower for you!

We drove just over an hour due south.  We have discovered that we have a blue sticker on the back of the van which means that we are certified self-contained.  That means that we are able to stay at designated free campsites overnight, but the majority of them are without any facilities whatsoever.  Our toilet ‘facilities’ consist of a mini portaloo that can be pulled out into the main living area.  We’re not sure if we’ve reached wanting to save money that much, yet!  So, tonight, we found cheap overnight parking instead at Whangamata Marina.  A little like we had got used to in US parks, we completed a self-registration envelope, slipped $5 in for the night and found the toilet block that we are able to use.  Result! This should make up for last night’s expense. 

Whangamata marina as the sun went down....

We're quite happy with our new set-up

The unit in the back has two sliding sections - cooker on the left with storage underneath and sink on the right

A New Zealand thrush (safe assumption!)

I made an easy meal of meatballs, completed the scribblings on our Australia map and caught up with some blogging whilst watching some wildlife before the sunset. Quite a busy full first day…