New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula – Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove
After picking up our campervan from Auckland, our first stop was the Coromandel Peninsula.
Hot Water Beach
We already knew the main thing we wanted to see here was Hot Water Beach. This is a beautiful golden beach where the ocean is pretty damn cold, but hot springs come up through the sand. So at low tide you can grab yourself a spade and dig your own steaming hot spa pool in the sand! Yes, it is just as good as it sounds! The water is so hot that it’s actually too hot to even paddle in – you have to make sure your hole is also channeling in some cooler water or it’s scalding. Pretty awesome though!
Just make sure you get there at low tide, which was 11am – 3pm and 11pm – 3am while we were there. It’s still a beautiful beach to see the rest of the time, but the sea comes up too high for you to access the hot springs if you don’t get there at low tide. We got there about 2pm and were almost too late! We managed to build a good pool, although it was pretty shallow so on the pics it just looks like we’re sat in a hole ha!
We were staying in the TOP10 Holiday Park just over the road from the beach so we decided to come back at night, which turned out to be the best decision! We got there about 11.30pm so the tide was just going out and it was a little tricky to get the hole started as the sand was so wet. But we (George under my expert supervision) got there in the end! Luckily it was a completely clear night without a moon, so we could see millions of stars sat there on the dark beach! It was unbelievably magical soaking in a hot pool on the beach under all those stars with the steam swirling around us. And it was all for free! Well, we had to pay $5 to hire a spade. But other than that, totally free wonderment!
Cathedral Cove
Just a ten minute drive from Hot Water Beach is the car park and entrance to the Cathedral Cove walk. The signs say it is a 45 minute walk to the cove from the car park, but it only took us 20 minutes so you don’t really need any more than an hour to see it. Of course if you want to spend more time enjoying the beach allow more time, it was a little late in the day for us. 🙂
The walk down to the cove is really beautiful with big views out to sea and tiny limestone islands dotted around. And Cathedral Cove itself is stunning with a 12-Apostle-like cliff just out from the coast next to it, which you can see through the cave arch on the beach. It was really cute just wandering on the white sands through the arch and taking in the sea, which had gone purple as the sun was going down. Such a pretty place!
