Our last stop on the North Island was the Coromandel Peninsula- a beautiful area 2-3 hours from Auckland.
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| No wonder it's Auckland's playground! |
We stayed right near the beach in The Coromandel Peninsula and it was really stunning ! We stayed 2 nights in the ground floor apartment of a house that belonged to a lovely couple who lived upstairs.
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| Breakfast - Nathan heading out to the lanai |
On our first evening, we went to checkout Cooks Beach... and enjoyed an amazing sunset!
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| Sunset... nice! |
In the morning on the first day, we went to Hot Water Beach - us and 500 other people - just kidding, but there were a lot of people searching for the underground hot water springs!
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| Hot water beach... looks normal, right... but... |
We spent about an hour digging a hole where the sand was burning hot. There's a reason why the beach is called Hot Water Beach! Hehe... The water in certain places is hotter than hot tub temperature! There are hot springs under the sand. So, we spent the morning in our homemade hot tub on the beach!!!!!!!
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| When we started digging |
In the afternoon, the owner of the house took us out on his boat... we got to ride in the boat on the way down to the water... checkout this video!
Riding to the boat launch
Us kids had never been boating on anything other than a large deep sea fishing boat on the ocean - it was very bumpy! We
got to feed some 2'-4' long Snapper fish, and one bit my hand!
Feeding snappers
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| There's a reason they're called snappers! |
After that, we we toured around the peninsula a bit... my dad and Nathan swam into a cave to check it out.
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| My crazy dad and Nathan swimming in 6' swells towards a cave - can you spot them?! |
Then, we went right into a blow hole that our "guide", mr. Neil, had always wanted to go in... It was so narrow and stressful, but we got to a really nice view. I was freaking out as we were trying to turn around because we kept nearly hitting rocks. The boat was fine in the end because our captain worked the passage ways and my dad pushed the boat around to help out!
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| Entering the blow hole cave |
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| The passage way from inside the cave |
The ocean swells kept pushing our boat around, so steering was really hard!
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| The trees at the cave ceiling |
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| A wrap-around of the cave bottom |
Next, we went to Cathedral cove. We jumped off the boat and swam to shore.
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| Cathedral cove is the dark cave you can see right through in this photo |
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| Swimming to the cove's left side beach |
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| Me second-guessing the cold swim |
The waves were easily 5' tall at the break - we had to time things just right - kinda scary. We passed through the cove, and that was kinda scary too - waves were slamming the right side beach right into the cove... we had to run across in between waves!
The waves were huge and we thought we would never make it back to the
boat.. We were freaking out. Literally. Anyway, we timed our run/swim out
and made it back safely!
Coromandel was really neat. we found lots of cool shells there. I definitely suggest a visit there if you go to New Zealand.
Great post Chelsea. Your description plus the photos made me feel like I was right there. Sounds a bit scary but fun too.
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed the post - yes, it was scary, but in the end it turned out fine.
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