Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach

I know I've been slack about updating my blog. I've been working a lot at the Pepper Tree - it's finally gotten busy so time is passing at work more quickly. My last side trip was a spontaneous trip to Whitianga, another town on the Coromandel Peninsula. I had a few days off of work and wasn't sure what I was going to do because it had been raining a lot. I woke up my first day off of work and it was raining again so I decided I shouldn't try to go anywhere. By midday the sun was shining and I walked to the Driving Creek Cafe to have lunch. While waiting for my lunch at the cafe another solo traveler started talking to me. Veronika was from Austria and was heading to Whitianga on a shuttle that afternoon. It had turned out to be a pretty day so I decided to go too. I walked home, packed my backpack and met her at the info center to head off to Whitianga. There was one other traveler on the shuttle - an Australian guy named Adam. During our hour drive to Whitianga we all got to know each other and had plans to meet for dinner that night. I stayed at On the Beach Backpackers - a hostel that is right across the street from the beach...go figure. Veronika, Adam and I ate dinner in town that night. We all wanted to see the same places the next day so we decided to rent a car together which was cheaper than taking a shuttle tour. The next day we rented our car and headed of to Shakespeare's Cliff. There was a really nice view from the top of the cliff and then we hiked down a short trail to Lonely Bay - a pretty, isolated beach. There were tiny seashells covering the beach and the water was freezing, then again I'm a wimp who only likes to swim if it's at least 85 or 90 degrees. We relaxed on the beach for awhile and then headed to Cathedral Cove. It is about a 30 minute hike to get to Cathedral Cove from the carpark (aka: parking lot). It's called Cathedral Cove because there is a huge rock archway that has formed over the beach which resembles a cathedral. You can walk through the archway to a section of white, sandy beach. The beach was wide and beautiful with rocks jutting out of the water on one end. Veronika's job in Austria was a massage therapist so she gave me a nice massage on the beach - the advantages of meeting fellow travelers! We ate lunch and relaxed before heading off to our final stop for the day - Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach has hot springs under the earth that bubble up through the sand. The idea is that one hour on each side of low tide you can dig a hole in the sand and sit in your own natural hot tub. The day we were there the tide didn't really go out enough to dig a hole. I found out later it was because the wind was pushing the waves farther into shore than normal. We did see the springs bubbling up through the sand though. I put my foot over it and just about scalded myself - it was so hot! It was so funny to see a bunch of adults walking around with shovels trying to dig holes in the sand with the ocean rushing in on them. After Hot Water Beach we drove back to Whitianga (about a 3o minute drive), showered and then met up for dinner at an Indian restaurant. The next day I had to catch the shuttle back to Coromandel and be at work at 5. It was fun to meet other travelers and have our plans work out so easily. I tried to post a link to my pictures at the top of this blog, but from this computer it's only showing up as a white line. If you click at the top of the blog it should take you to my website with pictures of the trip. I hope it works!

Road Trip

Krista, Jake and I set out on Monday morning for our 3 day road trip. Jake is a new roommate who is living in the corner of our living room. We have a large living room without much furniture so when Jake was unhappy in his previous staff house we told him to come on over. Splitting rent 5 ways for a 2 bedroom house is not bad at all! I guess we should adopt "the more the merrier" as our motto. Back to the road trip... we rented a car, a Nissan Bluebird, from a Coromandel gas station and set off. First of all, driving on the left side of the road is not as hard as I thought it would be. The only problems I had are switching on the windshield wipers when I wanted to turn on the turn signal and glancing up in the wrong direction to look in the rearview mirror. Most of the roads in New Zealand are two lanes so once you get going it's easy to just stay on your side. Everytime I need to turn I just keep saying over and over in my head "left, left, left". Renting a car was great because we could go wherever we wanted and do stupid stuff like stop and take pictures with the giant Lemon & Paeroa bottle.

The first day we headed to Rotorua. We went to the Agrodome where they have an odd combination of a sheep show, a farm tour and adventure activities such as bungy jumping, jet boating, swooping, free falling and zorbing. Krista and Jake did the Swoop (you get wrapped up in a sleeping bag like sack and get raised up in the air then drop down into a giant swing) and the Free fall (you're in a giant wind tunnel and it's supposed to feel like you're skydiving). I decided to conserve my money since I have a lot more trip to go. I decided to just do the Zorb, which Jake and Krista did with me. The Zorb is a huge, inflatable ball with a smaller ball connected to the inside. You get inside the smaller ball and they squirt some water into it. Then they zip you inside and push you down a hill. I chose to do the curvy hill where you go up on the sides of hills and back down. I was slipping and sliding around inside the ball the whole way down. It was really fun! After the Agrodome we drove to see the view of Lake Tarawera and then went to Hell's Gate, which is an area of geothermal activity. We saw bubbling hot springs, mud pots and steaming lakes. Finally at the end of the day we drove about 45 minutes to Whakatane where we stayed at a hostel called Lloyd's Lodge.

Tuesday morning we got up and went on a boat trip to White Island, New Zealand's only active marine volcano. This trip was incredible! It was an hour and a half boat trip just to get to the island and then we took a tour of the island for about 2 hours. On the way to the island we saw a pod of dolphins. They came up and swam right by the bow of the boat! Anybody who knows me knows that was my favorite part of the whole day! After they played around the ship for a few minutes they all took off at once, jumping in and out of the water. It looked like they were racing our boat. One of the tour guides said it was because the dolphins saw us as competition for their food and wanted to get there first. When we got to the island we had to climb into a small dingy to reach the shore. We climbed onto a metal ramp and then over some boulders to get to the sand. The tour of the island was really neat. I can't really describe it - you just have to look at the pictures. There is a huge crater where the volcano has erupted that seeps steam constantly. The colors from the sulphur and other metals were so vibrant. It was cool seeing the scientists taking data from the volcano. On the way back I laid on the front of the boat and took a nap in the sun. When we got back to shore we drove to Tauranga where we spent the night. Tauranga is a neat city right on the harbour with a nice stretch of restaurants and bars right by the water. The hostel we were supposed to stay in looked really crappy so we found another one right by the harbour. It was great - it had a big living room and balcony area that looked out onto the harbour and a really nice kitchen (not that we used it). :) We went out to dinner that night and met up with one of Krista's friends who she had met in Auckland.
On Wednesday we were supposed to go hiking on Mt. Maunganui, but it was raining. We ended up going to breakfast, wandering around the city, and then uploading pictures online for awhile. It was just drizzling later in the afternoon so Krista and I drove over to see Mt. Maunganui and the beach there. We're definitely going to go back at some point. It was a really nice beach! We spent one more night in Tauranga and then drove home early on Thursday morning. It was so nice to get out of Coromandel for a few days and do some exploring!!
The slideshow on the right side of my blog page are from the road trip. If you click on the slide show it will take you to my Picasa Web Albums web page where you can view all of the pictures I've posted so far!