A beautifully constructed hot water foot spa

With an overnight stop off in Orewa again to breakup the journey we moved onto the Coromandel peninsular for a few days. Our first stop was a beautiful walk down to (and backup from) Cathedral Cove which has been sculpted by the unforgiving waves. The huge stone arch has been roped off (it seems to be finally giving into the elements) so we could not venture far along the beach or see the blow holes but it was still very pretty.

Part of the amazing water carved cove

The waves are this big

Our over night stay was at Hot Water Beach Top 10 park and again it did not disappoint, the facilities were very new and there was a really nice communal lounge/eating area where we got chatting to a few of the other campers. It was rather difficult not to as a gregarious Australian guy with his son in tow made himself the host introducing everyone to each other. We had a fun evening trying to chat to people from all over the world (although mainly France and Germany). Who knew that car insurance was so cheap in Australia?

The morning of the 13th we made an early start to beat the tide (and the crowds) to the highlight of New Zealand so far, the hot water at the beach. After a few minutes poking around trying to work out what to do we located our own area of hot sand and started to dig with everyone else (there were about 20 of us at this time). At a few points half way along Hot Water Beach (only accessible near low tide) hot water warmed by the volcanism in the area bubbles to the surface. We quickly found that the temperature of the water varied over a very small area, within 6 inches it could go from boiling to freezing. Being my geeky self I realised that the nice temperature areas ran in a band down the beach so dug a long trench with a pool at the end rather than a wide pool like everyone else, once I had finished building the walls we had our very own perfectly constructed hot water foot spa where we lounged for the next few hours until the beach got too crowded.

Me digging with a saucepan

Aimee enjoying my creation - note the large retaining wall

Is Aimee smiling because of the hot water or the view?

Relaxed like only a free, all natural, foot spa can make you we stopped at the Hot Water Beach cafe and had a delicious platter of fresh bread, hummus, salmon and other such goodies and read magazines. Now totally chilled out we departed on the short two and a half hour drive to Papamoa beach, but how long would it take us to get there…