Friday 23rd November – Off to the Coromandel and Cathedral Cove

Today was due to be the best weather day of the weekend so we headed off as soon as we could to drive roughly an hour and a half to the Coromandel. And this time Simon had the pleasure of joining us on our travels too!

 

We did stop for a couple of nice views on the way however:

Tairua beach looking towards the headland with Motuhoe Island on the left

Cathedral cove 'dome' from the inside

We followed our instructions to find our accommodation for the weekend and grabbed our togs (that’s swimming cossies in the language of the homeland) and beach towels.  Arriving at Hahei beach we were able to park right by the coast and headed to wait for the water taxi. We were slightly disappointed to find that the taxi was only running until 4pm and it was about 3pm already… we’d get to spend less than an hour at Cathedral Cove. Ah well, this may be our only opportunity to get there this weekend so we’d just have to enjoy a speedy visit. One of mine and Simon’s biggest regrets during our whirlwind tour of NZ in January was that we had not allocated enough time to allow us to see this. 

Scale of the rocks at Cathedral Cove (humans for scale)

 

Despite the temperature of the sea approaching zero, I had promised Becky a chance to try snorkelling for the first time, so in we went….. eventually!  I can’t say we saw much but it was a momentous occasion for Becky as it was the first time she had ever swum out of her depth in the sea! 

Site of our (brief) snorkel adventure

Our taxi back to Hahei

Simon dragged us out of the water to make a dash for the taxi but we ended up getting a little extra time there due to the large number of people waiting for a lift back. We were partly being polite by letting others board the taxi first, but we were also playing for time because Becky managed to lose her shoes! The driver agreed to do a couple of extra runs as it was so busy and after a panicked search of the beach we recovered the missing shoes…. She’d left them on the taxi after all!

View from our accommodation

We had time to shower, change and even get a game of cards in before going out to dinner at the Hot water beach bar which holds an open mike night every Friday.  Sadly, it was so popular, that once the temperature had dropped too much for us to continue sitting outside it was standing room only in the bar and we opted to call it a night.

Our table at Hot Water Beach Bar