Hot Water Beach

We went to Hot Water beach today, which as the name suggests a lovely beach where there are hot freshwater springs under the beach. This brings literaly 100’s of people at low tide with spades in hand to dig their own hot pools.

A load of tourists

We chose to observe from a distance thus avoiding the crowds instead taking a lovely long walk the stretch of the beach and back.

A bird, I think from the seagull family

Nice beach

After hot water beach we headed to Cathederal Cove, which is ‘The Highlight’ of the Coromandal. On the signs from the carpark it said this walk was ‘Easy’ and takes 50 minutes each way. So we set-off from the car thinking we would make it there and back in under an hour if we were quick, stupidly without water or sun cream. We stopped at the first point, Gemstone beach which was a long way down off the track.

Awesome beach

Cathedral Cove

Me walking on the beach

Wanting to remove the climb back up we decided to rock hop around to the next place to see Stingray Bay – this took a lot longer, well over an hour and was a lot harder considering I was wearing my useless $1 flipflops. We then walked up to the track tired and thirsty before continuing on to Cathedral Cove, which was well worth the walk as it was beautiful, although we had a long steep climb back to the car. After this we decided we needed something to eat and somewhere to camp up for the night after our long 4 hour walk. So we treated ourselves to a paid campsite and a nice shower for $25.

Hot Water Beach, New Zealand