New Zealand

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Hot Water Beach was our morning’s destination but when we found out the times of low tide, we felt sure we’d miss it as we were quite a distance away. We decided to set off and take in the beaches on the way anyway as we didn’t want to rush and miss what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful coastlines in the country.

We walked on some spectacular beaches with soft, powder white sand. I won’t bore you with their names here as there are plenty of photos to look at with captions on. I decided that if I moved to NZ I’d want to live at New Chums Bay, although Matt pointed out (ruining my daydream) that there would be nowhere to work in the area as it’s in the middle of nowhere.

By the time that we finally made it around to Hot Water Beach we’d missed all the hot water as the tide was coming in. We had a walk over to the place where you could dig your own hot water pool in the sand and there were still a few people there enjoying themselves as the tide lapped at the walls of their holes.

We headed back to the car and set off to find Cathedral Cove. We stopped at Hahai Beach first - this was a lovely stretch of white sand. The weather was actually fine and sunny for a change so we enjoyed a stroll along the edge of the water.

Cathedral Cover was part of a nature reserve a few minutes drive uphill. We parked up and set off on the wakling trail. The first stop a few minutes away was Gemstone Bay, which was filled with large boulders of different colours. We walked back up the hill again and carried on to Stingray Bay. This had to be accessed by climbing over large boulders which Matt loved. It was beautiful and sandy and almost deserted when we arrived, but minutes later a kayaking tour arrived and when it became busy we decided to head back on the track to Cathedral Cove.

The walk went up and down hills and had us out of breath at points. By the time we finally arrived, about an hour after setting off from the van, we were hot and puffed out. The bay was split into two by a hole in a rock that stood between Mares Leg Cove and Cathedral Cove. The hole in the rock was amazing and there were all kinds of erosion patterns on the cliffs around us. In the water were various rocks that had once been part of the mainland but had either dropped off or been eroded away by the sea. We took so many photographs from every possible angle. This was probably the busiest beach we’d been to since arriving, and even the long walk didn’t seem to have put people off.

Our walk back went quicker than I expected and we were very pleased to see the car park so celebrated with an ice cream. We’re now addicted to hokey pokey ice cream - I hope we can get it back at home.

As it was late already we decided to stay local so that we could get a second go at hot water beach. We managed to find a camp park right on Hahia Beach so as soon as we parked up we set off for a beach walk to watch the sun set.

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Photos

Karen at Cathedral Cove
Karen thought that Matt was going to kill himself trying to climb the high rocks to take pictures from this vantage point. Luckily he survived.