Cathedral Cove

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Shortly after we get up we move to the family cottage. It is absolutely huge compared to what we have had with the kids each getting their own room. Joshua makes friends with a traveling Swiss boy and after playing for some hours they find a baby hedgehog which they adopt as their own, trying to find it the best food. These things seem to have no fear. Joshua is worried about it being on the lawn, and moves it to the forest but it comes right back onto the lawn again. It truly seems undisturbed by all the attention that it generates.

After lunch we pack and do an hour hike to a place called Cathedral cove. The hike takes us along the beach (just a hundred metres from our cottage on the other side of the sand dunes) and then up along some high cliffs. The view is spectacular with pillar like islands disappearing off into the distance. We are again under a canopy of silver ferns with strange giant grasses fluttering in the wind.

The cove is a large beach with a huge archway that you can walk through. Small islands stand on pillars out of the ocean and seem so eroded at the bottom, you think they might topple over. Benjamin and Joshua play in the surf and later add their names to the hundreds carved in the sandstone pillars. We also explore sea caves which begin to fill with water as the tide comes in.

When we get back to the cottage, Evy and I begin making plans for the next leg of our trip. We book a car in Sydney and try to decide where in Thailand we want to be for Christmas/ New Year. Right now, it looks like it will be someplace on the coast near the town of Krabi, but we are still trying to decide.

In the twilight, Joshua and his new friends find a full grown hedgehog with is just as unafraid as the baby one was. I guess it you have a prickly spine, there is not much that will cause you trouble. The plan for tomorrow is to go visit the hotwater beach.

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Photos

Face of the cliff
If you've seen Prince Caspian, this might look familiar!