Feelin' hot, hot, hot

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In the night on the campsite of Hahei went to the loo, as you do, and saw the most amazing stars and we could see 3 planets ( not sure what ones).
We got up and drove south to hot water beach, now as the name suggests it's a beach that is ontop of some hot water springs (64 degrees c), now these hot water springs are not uncommon as New Zealand is so geothermically active! You can't swim here because of the under currents, it is one of the most dangerous beaches in New Zealand.

You can only get to the hot water at low tide, we knew this was at 3.45pm but still we got there at 10 am. So we sat in our van and waited not knowing how cool it was going to be. So the time came, we went and hired our shovel from the cafe on the front for $4 and set off to find the hot spots. (what is a hot spot not?) even though the sky was grey, doesn't stop us tourists! Andy started digging, but was cold water, several attempts later we found a hot spot, a good spot!
Andy got digging whilst I supervised! He dug us a nice swimming pool sized hole for us to lounge in. Some pools that people had dug were really steaming, ours was just right. In the sea there were boiling springs coming out the sand that proper scolded your feet and if you sunk your feet into the sand it also burned your feet. So we stayed here for a couple of hours.

Next we headed to Tauranga and stayed there for the night and saw a few fire works going off in the distance.

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