Day 2 – Coromandel Peninsula

Against all odds both Carly and I have seamlessly adjusted to the time difference and we both woke up at about 6:30am. A leisurely cup of tea (yes, I brought the Lipton tea bags from home), and we set off to a café at Hot Water Beach. There we reprised our previous travel habits of sharing a savoury (bacon & eggs) and sweet (berry pancakes) for breakfast. It was very yummy and was only slightly disrupted when a larg(ish) bird of undetermined origin smashed in to the window where I was sitting. It seemed to survive the experience and flew away, if in a somewhat zig zag pattern. Hot Water Beach is famous for its warm water underneath the sand, only at low tide, and you have to dig…quite a bit. We had hired a spade from the hotel but needed to wait until low tide so we set off on another adventure.

Carly had heard that Cathedral Cove was a “must see” so we set off to check it out. We luckily jagged a parking spot in the car park and then set off on the walk, signposted to be 45 minutes each way. What they failed to tell us is that there are thousands (I don’t think that is an exaggeration) of steps and very steep hill climbs. Although I can say now that the walk was worth it, at the time we weren’t so sure! There were also a couple of side tracks (with more steps!) to get down to Gemstone Bay and Stingray Bay – Carly insisted that we had come this far… Anyway, it was pretty fabulous at the beach at Cathedral Cove – lovely scenery.

With legs shaking, out of breath, and a good sweat worked up, we were back in the car and heading back to the Hot Water Beach. We decided we couldn’t possibly dig after all that exercise so we walked down to the beach and watched the hordes dig holes so that hot water could seep up and they could lie in it. We were happy enough to live vicariously through these strangers for a little while and then it was back to the car and off again.

Our next stop was the Lost Springs in Whitianga…and didn’t we need that after all that walking? There were a number of thermal pools of varying heat that we sampled. It was fabulous and we spent a very relaxing hour and a half there. Our next stop was in the village of Tairua where we found a café still serving food at 4pm and we had Linner (our version of a cross between lunch and dinner). You may recall this is another travel habit of ours – one that allows us to have chocolate for supper as we have really only had two meals in the day, (well, that’s our reasoning and who dares argue with it?) So after our Linner of beef burger (Carly) and creamy pasta (me), we were back on the windy roads of the Coromandel Peninsula and back at the resort by 6pm.

After such an adventurous day we were more than happy to rest up for more adventures tomorrow.