Thursday 16th May 2013
Tonight we were going to spend our first night with relatives in Hamilton, Waikato but before descending on Christine’s cousin John and his family we added a significant detour to our journey. We hadn’t set aside any time to visit the Coromandel Peninsula and so our only option was to do a driving tour round it in one day.
After an absolutely superb breakfast at the Palm House we set off and managed to get to Thames (at the base of the Peninsula) in about 3 hours. After stopping for some supplies we set off on State Highway 25, a wonderful road that hugs the coast all the way round. A gorgeous sunny morning made for perfect driving weather.
After passing through the village of Coromandel we headed towards Hot Water Beach, timing our run to coincide with right tides. As the name suggests this beach is famous for the hot water pools that can be dug in the sand. You turn up with a spade (two hours either side of low tide), dig yourself a hole, let it fill with water and then enjoy temperatures of up to 64°C.
Although we didn’t have spades we expected to benefit from the kindness of strangers and share in the fruits of their labour, or at least borrow their spades. When we arrived the signs were promising. A number of people had started to gather around a rock formation half way along the beach. Most were standing there staring out to sea with some holding spades but others were wandering about fruitlessly hacking at the beach.
Nobody could find any hot water. Had we got the wrong time of day? But more and more people started to arrive and everybody kept drawing blanks. Was the whole thing just a trick being played on stupid tourists? Having had a look at other pictures and compared the lie of land and sea we think that the low tide just wasn’t low enough.
In the end we gave up and decided to try and get to nearby Cathedral Cove in time for sunset. Unfortunately we got there a little late to experience the beauty of sunset but the walk and the beach was another contender for entry onto the ‘most incredible sights’ list. And we were still only in our second week in New Zealand!
With some difficulty we tore ourselves away from the serenity of the cove in the gathering dusk but we still had another long journey ahead of us. So we hiked back to the car, gave some stranded hitchhikers a lift to a ferry and then set off on the long slog to Hamilton and the warm welcome of rellies.
You can see all our photos from today, as well as the rest of the photos from our trip on Flickr.
Distance travelled: 545km
Total distance travelled: 21,257km