Cathedral Cove

The hike down was a bit quicker but we had to ford a river at the bottom. Luckily the water levels were low so we could just hop across some rocks to keep our feet dry. It was still early in the day when we finished so we drove out to Cathedral Cove. The place was actually really busy with tourists and the lighting was not very good for photos. I think catching a sunrise here would be really cool. On the way out, we took a quick detour to Hot Water Beach but had just missed low tide. What is neat about hot Water Beach is that you can dig a hole in the sand and it will fill up with hot water from thermal activity below. All you need to bring is a big shovel. We saw a bunch of people digging down looking for hot spots but they are harder to find with high tide.

There aren’t many free places to stay in Auckland so we stopped in Pukekohe about 45 minutes outside of Auckland. It was another night of All Black’s rugby which we enjoyed it at a local bar and headed Rosa Birch Park for some freedom camping.Read more