September Series: Coromandel, Cathedral Cove, & Hot Water Beach

What would you do after coming back from a tropical vacation? Ease back into work...Stay home and do laundry from the trip...sleep in perhaps? Those are all great options, but I didn't do any of them (well except laundry, but I didn't stay home just to do that 😉). Clara and I flew back into Auckland on Sunday, September 16th and we both went right into a week of work starting Monday. Then, Friday evening, we headed out with our friend Sophia (introduced in my last blog post) to Thames for the start of our weekend trip. Busy, busy, busy!

First, here are a few snapshots from my first week back from Fiji.

 I came back to the house one evening and heard a bird screeching from Emily's room. At first I thought her window was open and it was outside making the racket. Turns out, there was a baby bird INSIDE her room (courtesy of the cat)! Nobody was home, so I had to take care of it. As you can see, I improvised when I couldn't find gloves.😂 I brought it outside and let it go...I hope everything turned out ok!

Colorful salt dough with Miss A!

 Emily had a school play we all attended. It was cute and reminded me of the good 'ol days in elementary school.

I got an AMAZING care package from my aunt and uncle! My favorite thing was a toss up between the homemade pickles and the Erhard maple leaves. 🍁 It's always fun to get things from family...thank you!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND

We had spent Friday night at an Airbnb house with two lovely hosts. We chatted with them for a few minutes before heading out for breakfast and a quick look at the local Saturday market in Thames. There were various tables/stands set up along the sidewalks. We enjoyed browsing before heading out along the coast up to Coromandel. First, we stopped and found a geocache that was pretty cleverly hidden...take a look!

Location: In a "garden" at a picnic stop.

View from picnic stop.

With the cache found and signed, we continued on our way. Since the day was quite open and unplanned, we searched for sights to see and found two main ones - a square Kauri tree and some falls. We decided to stop at both, because why not? At one point on the road a motorcycle sped past us and then a couple turns later, we saw he had wiped out. Thankfully, he looked ok as he was standing and getting his bike righted...but it could have been worse. Anyways, we arrived at the square Kauri tree location. There were a few stairs to climb, but not too many (thank goodness)! There were a couple people we ran into on the trail, but it wasn't overly busy. The tree DID have a squarish trunk - so unique! Kauri trees are native trees that grow in the northern part of New Zealand. The widest one recorded has a diameter of over 4 meters! We admired the tree, took a few pictures, and then drove on towards the falls.

Fun on the trail.

You can see how the trunk is more square than circle.

A nice gentleman took our picture for us.

Before driving into Coromandel, we found two more caches (one of which involved walking through tall grass - thank goodness there are no snakes here!) and made the decision to grab lunch before seeing the falls. What else to eat but fish and chips?! 😆 We had some company in the form of seagulls...many of them...and a slightly intoxicated guy who invited us to play pool (we politely declined). Coromandel was a slightly underwhelming town from what I was expecting, but we didn't exactly spend a lot of time there either. Our final destination for the evening was at a holiday park near the east coast. This meant we had to drive about an hour ACROSS THE COUNTRY (well sort of). In all seriousness, we had two options: take the highway or drive on The 309 Road (gravel). We chose the more adventurous option because in addition to the promised beautiful sights, we saw there were also quite a few caches along the way. Plus, the falls were on that road as well...so there really wasn't any contest. 

View from one of the areas we stopped to find a cache. 😍

 I solved a crossword.

Lovely archway near the info center.

When we arrived at the falls, we were the ONLY ones there...for maybe 10 minutes or less. But still, we were able to get pictures without any other people in them - which is a huge accomplishment. They were smaller falls, but still beautiful in their own way. As we were leaving, a group of others came down and one girl went swimming (brrrr)! With the falls checked off of our list, we were able to focus on driving The 309 Road and geocaching. Unfortunately, it was getting closer to evening when we began the drive so we were not able to stop at as many caches as we could have (check out the photo below). We only found 5, but could have potentially found 35 had we had the time! One of our favorite moments was when we drove through an area with pigs beside the road - they were adorable!

 Waiau Falls

The 309 Road - reminds me of home!

Sometimes geocaching takes you into the bushes...

I couldn't quite get a screenshot of all the caches along the road...but you can see there are many!

Too adorable.

 Perhaps the best part of the drive was the beautiful sunset at the end.

Overall, we were glad to have taken The 309 Road and I'd like to do it again...purely for the geocaches. There was a rest stop nearby where we parked in order to eat our treats we had purchased earlier in the day at Coromandel. We got to our cabin, freshened up quick, and then headed to Whitianga for some dinner. Our initial plan was to grab some Thai food at a local restaurant. However, we couldn't find the place....it was like it disappeared! By the time we found a place to eat, we were quite hangry. We ate at this Greek/Italian restaurant where there was live music and dancing. It took forever for our food to arrive, but it eventually did! After dinner, we walked back to our car and then drove the 1/2 hour to our cabin. We just relaxed the rest of the evening and enjoyed a glass of wine.

A glimpse of the music and dancing at the Greek/Italian place.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 23RD
By 9:00 A.M. the next morning, we had checked out and were sitting down to breakfast at a cafe near Hot Water Beach. The food was delicious, but the strangest thing we saw that morning was a one legged seagull - no joke!

Our place - the Tui cabin.

The parking lots near the beach were quite full, so we went to a different one a little further away (but free) where there was plenty of room. We gathered our beach essentials - plus our shovels - and headed towards the massive group of people. Thank goodness the sun was shining! The day was gorgeous and perfect for a morning on the beach. Hot Water Beach is famous for its naturally heated mineral water that emerges from the sand. People can dig their own spa pools there and sit in hot water just a few feet from the Pacific Ocean! The catch is that there's only a specific section of sand that has this hot water, so it's best to be early to get a good spot. We didn't know this beforehand, so we found an empty section near the ocean and started digging. A family next to us traded one of their shovels for our bucket. I don't even know how long we dug, but the water never got any warmer so eventually we abandoned our nice pool and walked along until we found a hot section right on the shore where we then sat and let the cold waves wash over our legs. I couldn't sit for too long as the hot water was REALLY hot. Some areas on the beach can get up to 147°F! The experience was worth it, even though it didn't go the way we thought it would. We spent a good 2-2.5 hours there before we decided it was time to go to Cathedral Cove.

On our way to go dig a hole.

 Making progress!

Our beautiful hole we abandoned.

 Yes the sand was hot...I didn't want to put my legs down on it!

 We enjoyed watching the waves crash into the rocks.

After cooling off in the ocean...

A short glimpse of the beach, people, and ocean.

We stopped at a lookout area to grab a better view of the ocean and then drove to the Cove. Instead of eating a proper lunch, we chose to have ice cream in Hahei (where Cathedral Cove is located). There was a cute souvenir store we browsed through before driving up the hill to the car park. Our first drive around the lot revealed there were no empty spaces. However, when Clara started going around again, we saw a couple walking to their car so we just waited until they left and took their spot. Perfect! The view from the lookout area was gorgeous. The colors were intense and simply couldn't be captured by our cameras...although I tried!

View from the lookout by Hot Water Beach.

Lookout by Cathedral Cove parking lot - the Cove is down to the left.

The walk from the car park to Cathedral Cove was about 45 minutes - give or take. We only took a few pauses on the way down for pictures but soon we descended the stairs to the beach and saw, for the first time, Cathedral Cove. What is the significance of this area you ask? Well, if you're familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia movie series, you may recall the moment in the second movie (Prince Caspian) where Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy go back to Narnia. That moment when they're in the train station and Narnia appears before them was filmed at Cathedral Cove!😱 If you haven't seen this series or don't remember this scene, check out this LINK and about 45 seconds into the clip, you'll see what I'm talking about. While it was gorgeous and we absolutely loved it, the downside was there were people all over taking pictures. We were really keen on having a picture without any humans in it and when we got our group photo, we only wanted us to be in it. So we patiently waited while everyone took their pictures and watched silently while others came in and took their pictures UNTIL - 1 hour later - there were only a small handful of us and we all took turns taking the pictures we wanted. It was glorious!

Enjoying the view.

 Another day, another tree!

Cathedral Cove from the outside.

Directly to the right of the previous picture.

The fruits of our labor.

I did do an actual good handstand, but I love the silhouette aspect of this picture so I just had to include it in here.

Let's play a game...where's Krista?

The water surprised us!

Cathedral Cove.

Eventually we had to begin the walk back to the car since we still had to drive all the way home! It was a bit more uphill on the way back, but nothing too serious. We ran into a few goats on the trail that definitely weren't there on the way down. Before leaving, we quickly found a geocache (naturally). Then, on our way to get dinner, we stopped at a lookout area to have one final glance of the beautiful East Coast. In Tairua, we filled the car up with petrol, grabbed burgers and fries, and then finished the drive back home.

From where I'm sitting, Cathedral cove is to my left and the ocean is directly in front of me.

Oh heyyyy goats!

Our last lookout before dinner in Tairua.

We had such a lovely weekend seeing yet another beautiful area of New Zealand - it's not hard to find beauty in the nature of this country. My favorite part of the weekend was standing in Cathedral Cove, knowing it was a filming location in a movie I'd seen. I completely understand why it was chosen to be used in the film too - such a magnificent view! While it's always a bit of a bummer to come to the end of a weekend trip, fortunately for us, we had something planned for the following weekend - woohoo! Stay tuned to see where we were off to next.

Hey! If you missed my last post, check it out now! 

Here's the link ---> In Auckland, or out of Auckland? That is the Question.

A quick look at where we drove over the weekend.

Only one more post in my September Series and then I'll get into October's adventures...until next week! 🖔