Day 7: Hot Water and Cathedrals

Hot Water Beach is about 30 minutes drive south from Whitianga and is famous for, surprisingly enough, having hot water on the beach.

You go there within 2 hours either side of low tide and dig a hole in certain sections and burn your feet on the 60 degree hot water that is just under the surface.

It works better when the low tides are not being made not so low by cyclone-induced weather and you can dig a hole large enough to sit in and have cool water mix in with it. With a cyclone causing havoc, we ended up with only a small area of beach that was exposed enough to dig down into. Fortunately, low tide today was a 6.32am so by the time we got there about 7.15 there were only a dozen or so others that were all trying to find the only exposed bit of sand.

By taking turns and with the help of a friendly local, we all got a chance to burn our feet at least, if not dig ourselves a spa size hole to sit and relax in.

We then had breakfast in the adjacent park before jumping back in the car and driving 10 mins up the road to a small town called Haihe, which has another famous beach called Cathedral Cove. You can only get to that by parking at a local carpark and walking about 30 mins to get access down a steep-ish set of stairs to the beach. And then back again, of course....

Our day's activities were done and dusted by 10am, so we drove back to Whitianga, picked up food for dinner at Woolies, and came home for a coffee and a shower before heading into town centre for a poke around op shops and an amazing bargain shop come hardware store and haberdashery. Our goal was fish and chips for lunch, which was achieved and then we found another op shop and second hand book store on way home again. Woohoo!

It was a pleasant day, if not action packed, and the rain held off most of the day. We even got a nice sunset!Læs mere