Catherdral Caves, Hot water beach and Thames

Trip Start Jul 12, 2006

107

230

Trip End Jun 18, 2007

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Where I stayed

Gateway hostel

(Thames hotels)

Flag of New Zealand Thames, New Zealand
Sunday, November 19, 2006

The weather wasn't that great when we got up but it wasn't raining so we took that as a good sign. Low tide wasn't until 12:56 and you can't do the Hot Water thing on the beach all the time. It has to be 2 hours either side of low tide so we drove to Cathedral Caves first. It was really busy in the car park but we found a space, grabbed some water and a sarnie or two and hiked to the caves. The sun had come out a bit by the time we got to them so the beach looked lovely. They're quite a popular hike so it seemed like everyman and his dog, plus all the tour buses had got there before us. We did all the detours off the hike, to Gemstone Bay and Stingray Bay but the caves themselves were pretty spectacular. You get a lot of weird rock formations off the coast of NZ for some reason, lots of interesting shaped pieces of land or holes in rocks. The cliffs around the beach were cool, bits of tree and plants hang precariously from the edge, waiting to fall when the weather eroded the rock away enough. We took a few photos then headed back to the car park so we could drive to Hot Water Beach and did a hole in the sand

Bubbling mud in the local park

. Hot Water Beach does exactly what it says on the tin (as with most things in NZ they are named for what they do). There's an underwater chamber of water that's heated to high temperatures and pushes hot springs through the sands on a small part of the beach, meaning that 2 hours either side of low tide you can take a spade, dig a hole, watch it fill up with hot water and then sit in your very own warm spa watching the surfers on the waves in front of you. However, it's just a small part of a big beach that you can do this on and when we arrived it was packed to the rafters. It was like blackpoll beach on a sunny bank holiday (except without the sewage). Everyman and his dog, plus all the tour buses that were at Cathedral caves had somehow managed to sneak past us on the road and had taken up all the space on Hot Water Beach, and I mean all the space, there wasn't an inch of the hot spring sands left. We'd borrowed a spade from Seabreeze and Lee dug random spots but they were all cold. Other people had dug holes but they were also cold. All the smug people that had got there early were sat in their huge holes, filled with lovely steaming warm water, enjoying their spa and hogging the beach. I said to Lee earlier that I thought this might be the biggest let down of our trip and I think I was right. We had a wander about, found a really hot bit at the front of the holes, where the tide was coming back in but it was too close to the sea to dig a hole. It was weird though, the water in the sand got so hot it almost scalded your feet if you stood in it too long

Geyser erupting

. There were people hopping about all over the place, dragging each other into the hot bit then shrieking in laughter and someone else's feet got burned. It was a very busy place, we were there for quite a bit, standing in cold pools of water taking pictures and pretending it was warm, posing with the spade for the photos but it was a bit chilly on the beach, the sun had disappeared behind the clouds and it spat rain out for a few seconds every now and then. We were almost going to give up in favour of a soggy, warm egg sarnie in the car but we had a wander around again and then saw a group of people vacant a hole in the sand. Lee and I dived in (not literally, just jumped in with our feet) and stood in the warm waters. It was lovely. I started to dig near the warmer end of the pool, which was dug right next to someone else's pool (as most of them were. Think of a honeycomb, enlarge it so that lots of people can sit in the holes, then plonk it on the beach and you have some sort of idea of the scene in front of us). As I was digging, I kind of collapsed the neighboring pools wall by accident. The German lady wasn't happy at all and tried to build it back up, but it was too late, the lovely hot water they'd been hogging spilled into our pool and warmed it up a treat. I felt really bad because I'd honestly not meant to do it but Lee had started digging away at the bottom of the pool, trying to make it deeper so that the bordering wall would collapse but it would look like an accident, which is exactly what happened

Lee getting out the zorb

. We ended up with a lovely warm pool of our own. Lee sat in it and I made myself a sand chair on the side and stuck my legs in. I'm not to sure our neighbors' were very happy but they'd been in it for ages so it was only fair to share. f�

We stayed in the pool for while until the tide started coming in too close and other people started taking over the pools, it was a bit of a free for all towards the end really, with people borrowing each others spades and digging randomly trying to find the hot water. We headed back up the beach towards the car park, Lee dashed off for a shower while I had a read of the lonely planet to decide where we were heading next. It was about 4pm so we decied that we didn't really have time to go any further into the Corramandel and headed for the little town of Thames instead. THat way we'd only be about 100km from Auckland tomorrow.

The drive there didn't take too long, the town was quite small and very very quiet for a Sunday evening. We made ourself at home in the Gateway hostel, chucked some more washing on in the free washing machine (doh!) and then had dinner. We were going to go out but there didn't seem to be much happening so we got chatting to some of the other people in the hostel and while I diddled about writing postcards and reading leftover Cosmo's Lee beat some guy at backgammon. It wasn't the most exciting night in the world but it was cheap and very relaxing, both of which we need at the moment!