Things we learned: Lets get sedated

It has been a cold night. so we decided to stay at one of the little cabins provided at most campsites in NZ. The one at Hot Water Beach had a special goody: a heated bed! And with the cold outside this was quite something. It had such a sedating effect that our eyes just slum shat when we turned it on. Like morphia the warmth swept through your body. So we overdosed a bit I guess and had a comatose sleep.

What we saw:

Hot water beach during the day… normal beach

Early morning walk to the beach. It was freezing cold. Wearing speedo/swimsuite with long-johns and thermal underwear on top was a first for us

digging the whole in the sand of the beach. it fills with hot water then

Thats too little man, more diggin’

sunrise

Really special…

The sea is steaming in the cold air

Looks like vacation…

High tide is arriving. The cold ocean waves spill into our warm bathtub… time to go

Mother Nature playing around in the sand

almost made it … splash

most campsites have cabins like these. for 2 night we stayed here

The Hot Water Beach is located on the Coromandel Peninsula. There are some nice walks in this area.

The Cathedral Cove is a natural tunnel at one of the nice beaches there.

You can walk through it to a fantastic beach.

The rock formations are incredible…

Hundreds of little islands out in the Ocean.

Stuff we did:

When we read about the place we knew it must be special. We arrived at the Top10 Campsite (a connection of Campsites with general good facilities, we became members which offered discounts and some nice goodies, was fully worth it).

After two rainy days in the tent with less than 5 degrees during the night we wanted to have a dry and warm spot. So we took one of the cabins they offer on most NZ campsites.

At 5am our alarms kicked us out of our sweet dreams. We put our bathing suits/speedos on and put warmest clothes on, including our long-johns and thermal underwear. Speedos with long-johns: that combination was a first timer for us….

It was bitterly cold as we walked to the beach, a little spate from the campsite in our hand.

We found the beach and dug a little hole close to the water shore.

After a few shovels the water filled the holes and started steaming. A geothermal site right under the beach heats up the water in the little dip we dug. We jumped in an enjoyed the warm natural bath.

I fact we had to keep digging, because the little hole we dig was filled very quickly with sand that collapsed from the side and in no time the hole was a shallow puddle. Some spots in our little dug hole were so hot you couldn’t sit on it. Slowly the pitch black of the night lightened up and on the horizon the blight blue showed the first signs of the new day. The blue turned into a firing orange and red when the sun rose above the Pacific Ocean and started shine on us on the beach. Steam was all over the waves that slowly brought the high tide back into the beach.

As the geothermal spots are only above the water level at low tide, there is only some small timeframes of 2x 4 hours per day where this phenomenon is approachable.

With the upcoming tide we started to get the first waves of cold water into our bathtub and so after 3 hours sitting in the hot water we finally gave up and left the beach to get back to our cabin.

What a wonderful start into the day. And with the early hour we had this wonderful beach moment almost all for ourselves.

We enjoyed a little walk to another nice beach (Cathedral caves) later that day.

What a wonderful time we had on the great peninsula Coromandel.