Last week was another busy one! Lots of swimming teaching (about 12 hours) and the regular days with Reuben, Libby and Tessa. After Saturday's lessons, I came home, showered, and Jacques and I were off to Hahei on the Coromandel peninsula for the weekend. The weather could not have been more perfect! It was like summer had come back completely for the weekend! We drove to Hahei and staying in the Tatahi Lodge right near the beach. We did the walk to the famous Cathedral Cove that evening and then visited Hot Water beach the next morning. The beach was pretty busy with people waiting with their spades for the tide to go out low enough. There's only a small section of the beach where you can dig (and only 2 hours either side of low tide) where the hot springs are felt. They are HOT! You need to dig far enough from the water so that the waves don't fill in your hole, but close enough so that you get a bit of cool water every now and again. Placement is tricky indeed! We merged "spas" with a few different people at times, better to work together to dig and build a wall so that all the hard work doesn't just collapse on itself with the next wave.
From there we drove up north a bit more, to Cook's Beach and Shakespeare's Cliff to look out. We saw the passenger ferry to Whitianga which would have literally been a 5 min swim across. instead we drove about 40k all the way around up to Whitianga and then continued on some more. We stopped off for some ice cream, just before getting to Otama Beach (which was deserted!) and asked for a double scoop. I was so surprised when she handed it to me and I saw my tower of ice cream!! It was more like a quadruple scoop and I couldn't eat it fast enough off the tiny cone and it started dripping down my arm...a bit messy. I went for one last swim at Otama beach in the waves and enjoyed the warm water before hopping back in the car, driving across to Coromandel Town, and then back down the coast via Thames and back up to Auckland. A lovely weekend away indeed.
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| People digging and spaing at Hot Water beach |
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| Otama Beach |
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| swimming all by myself at Otama Beach |
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| Partially eaten double scoop ice cream! |
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| A wave of cool water flowed in right at picture time! |
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| Hahei Beach |
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| Beginning of the walk to Cathedral Cove |
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| mid-walk to Cathedral Cove |
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| Cathedral Cove |
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| Otama Beach |
