Hello, hello! The Christmas holiday season in New Zealand is a little different than in the states. Here people actually take holiday and a lot of businesses shut down from about 17th of December through just after New Years if not longer. The Uni is shutting down from the 17th of December through the 10th of January. Which makes research a bit more difficult for Kevin as this is his primary field time down here. Oh well time for a little extra exploring right?
During this holiday season, quite a few Kiwis, especially North Islanders, make the Coromandel Peninsula their holiday destination. So we decided to hit it before it got busy and the prices jumped quite a bit. So last weekend we headed north with two friends, Lydia and Tim, to the Coromandel. Saturday around noon we hit the road with Lydia, as Tim had some very important cricket to attend to and would join us later that evening.
After checking in at a super cute motel/backpacker in Hahei, we grabbed our spades and buckets to hit up the world famous Hot Water Beach (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Water_Beach and
http://www.mercurybay.co.nz/activities/hotwaterbeach.php). Within two hours of either side of low tide people gather at Hot Water Beach to dig their own personal hot pool as toasty water percolates right through the sand thanks to two magma heated springs just 1-2km below the surface of the beach. Awesome! We managed to get to the beach about 2.5 hours before low tide and staked out an area near some rocks close to the breaking point of the tide. Kevin started digging as soon as he could but quickly overheard a guy next to him telling others how to truly fashion an awesome pool. This was not his first rodeo for sure. In the end we teamed up with this guy and a few other people to dig a truly amazing hot pool fortified with drift wood sea-walls and the one boulder forcing the hot water straight into our pool. Ahhhh, lovely.
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| Merging our pool with our neighbors, looking good Kevin and Lydia! |
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| Kevin observing the invaders in our pool |
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| Hot Water Beach gets thousands of people during low tide during the summer, this was near the end of low tide and low attendance as well |
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| This is how a weekend in December should be spent! |
Later that evening after Tim arrived there was a mutual decision to get up super early as low tide was perfectly coinciding with sunrise. So at 5am we got up, packed up pots of coffee and tea and headed back to Hot Water Beach. We built another amazing and deep hot pool for the four of us and settled in for the sunrise with cups of warm goodness. The amazing this was that we had this beautiful beach almost to ourselves with only a couple other people a little later on. Very much worth the lack of sleep!
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| Kevin and Tim building something amazing at around 5:15am |
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| We were 4 out of 6 people on the beach :) |
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| Everything is better when you bring tea and coffee |
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| Here comes the sun... |
After showers and breakfast at a local cafe we headed down to another very famous beach, Cathedral Cove or Te Whanganui-A-Hei Marine Reserve (
http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/places-to-visit/coromandel/te-whanganui-a-hei-cathedral-cove-marine-reserve/ ). This beach and cove area was recently used in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and for good reason. It is beautiful!! Although this spectacular beach does get busy, we are convinced it would be more busy if it wasnt for the 30 minute track to get out to it. This walk was beautiful in itself and made the whole day complete!
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| Takes more like 25/30 min |
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| The view from the walk |
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| Technically this is Mare's Bay, to the left and through the archway is Cathedral Cove (all beautiful) |
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| Tim and Lydia enjoying the beautiful beach |
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| There are sea caves along the water's edge |
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| Kevin deemed the closer island Rose Island and threatened all those who dared invade :) |
The early day and swims at Cathedral Cove left us all hankering for some yummy food so we headed down to Cooks Beach and grabbed a ferry ride over to Whitianga for some shopping and local fish and chips. Yum! And what day is complete without tasting the local agriculture, so we hit the Mercury Bay Winery on our way home. The best pinot noir we have tasted here yet!
So that was our east coast of the Coromandel adventure. We know that we will probably be back in January to enjoy more of this beautiful area, but for now it is time to let the Kiwi vacationers enjoy. This week has been a busy one with Kevin prepping for some major sampling/experimenting on Rotorua and Megan lining up some final sponsors for Orientation Week at the Uni. We are headed north above Auckland startin Saturday for a 5-6 day surfing holiday with our friend Bronwyn and Reagan. Hope you all are doing well and getting into the Christmas spirit. We still aren't feeling it too much here with the insane humidity and warm temps (not looking for sympathy but it is really hard to feel Christmasy when you expect to be bundled and enjoying fires not bbqs). However this Friday we will be introducing some friends to our favorite Christmas classics, Elf and A Christmas Story; so hopefully the Christmas spirit will abound after that.
Love and hugs to all of you!
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