Now... more about a wonderful day with my favourite people:
On our way to the Coromandel, we passed through Paeroa - home of L & P (famous NZ soda, like sweet/sparkly lemonade). Of course, we stopped to pose with this giant bottle and drink a bottle too.
2.5 - 3 hours and a few moments of worry whether we were on the right highway (good job Gabe, haha I didn't believe you) later, we arrived at the beaches. Leaving Gabe's trusty whip in the car park, we trekked with our beach gear on the 45-minute (quicker since we are young and spry) jaunt to Cathedral Cove. We stopped at two little coves on the way - Gem Bay and Stingray Bay - for some frolicking and fun photos and got to our destination by 4:30 p.m.Handstand in Stingray Bay, oooosh:
Most of the sun had gone by that late in the afternoon, but the boys bravely went for a swim. We spent a while exploring the beautiful beach and then hiked back to the car.
With a few hours to kill before low tide (necessary for our next stop), we went for a takeaway dinner of chicken nuggets, corn dogs (they call them hot dogs here, "American hot dogs" are our hot dogs fyi), mussel fritters, and chips of course, before driving a few minutes down the road to the Hot Water Beach.
A ways down this beach, there is an area where you can dig to make natural hot pools in the sand!! When the tide goes down, you can see small bubbles and steam seeping up through the sand - almost too hot to walk on in some spots! If you dig in the right area with your spade, you reveal pools of scalding hot water, suitable for some leisurely hot-tubbing :).
We arrived at the perfect time to stake out a spot and dig our pool with a sturdy sand wall to block the waves while the tide receded (we had a mishap with a freezing mini rogue wave before we got it right - it got the other 3 pretty good in the back of the head heheheh).
After a relaxing while, watching the sun go down, we piled back in the car and a very sleepy Fab 4 made it back to Hamilton by 11 p.m. GREAT DAY :)
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