We made a brief stop in the town of Thames for a bit of stretching and a snack (we'd been driving 90 minutes at least) and took the road up one side of the Coromandel that leads along the Firth of Thames.
What is a firth you ask? Besides being the best Mr. Darcy, a firth is like a fjord with less mountain and possibly more estuary.
The Firth of Thames looked beautiful and tranquil, but the views got really good once we gained a bit of elevation.
This is either Te Kouma Harbor or Manaia Harbor, but I couldn't tell you which. They're right next to each other on the map and I was too busy oggling the view to take note of where the gps said we were.
We turned inland and took a very narrow, occasionally paved road through the interior of the peninsula so we could get to the western side by way of some very short and lovely walks. The first was Waiau Falls.
Reaching this lovely waterfall is a simple walk down hill right by the road, it's just that the road is very twisty and pretty much a single lane width.
It was a nice little stop and only a kilometer away from another little walk. On our way we passed a sign that said "Please don't feed the pigs." Excuse I? But sure enough, moments later the gravel road was surrounded by dozens of free range pigs.
They were cuties and, no, we didn't feed them. We reached our next stop: a short loop trail to see some Kauri trees. Seeing a Kauri was on my wish list, but many trails with them are closed due to Kauri dieback disease. I think that says it all, it does have the word "die" right there in the title. It can be spread by our nasty little shoes picking it up somewhere and carrying it to the Kauri trees. That is why the trail had a shoe cleaning station at the top:
I think the only reason this trail is still open is because it uses boardwalks to get you close to the trees so you don't step on the roots. It's lower risk for the trees, so the wash station is probably adequate protection.
With all that said, it was another gorgeous walk through the sub-tropical bush. We saw our first Kauri and, uh, they big.
Big and old. Kauri trees can live thousands of years. The oldest living Kauri is over 2,000 years old, though it's probable that they can live much longer than that. And this species of tree has been around for 250 million years. These be dinosaur trees.
This is my favorite Kauri fact: The groves tend to show up where soil conditions are poor and terrain isn't ideal. They grow so slowly they are often out competed by faster growing trees and ferns. But Kauri trees are tough and hardy. They can thrive in rocky, steep terrain and with low nutrient soil where other plants struggle.
It may sound weird, but this tree might be my hero? A life that progresses slowly but surely through significant adversity where others falter and fail; now tell me you don't find that inspiring!
So Kauri trees are rad. We did our short little walk and then finished the last 45 minutes driving that winding, narrow, mostly gravel mountain road. We arrived on the western coast of the Coromandel at a little beach town called Hahei.
We checked into our cute little backpacker style hostel, made a bedtime call to our boys, and took the 5 minute walk down to Hahei Beach. Though it's impossible to see in the photos, but I assure you the sand is pink. There are so many red and purple shells that have been ground down to little pebble bits, they make the sand look pink.
It's a nice beach but, as we'd soon learn first hand, the swell is quite powerful. It's fine swimming or paddling once you get passed it, but it sure made sure you struggled for a bit getting out.
It made for a nice evening after so much driving in one day, and the pink beach looked exceptionally good at golden hour.
Right near our hotel was a little art space and kayak rental. We reserved a kayak and admired their lovely banyan tree, and then opted for a somewhat early dinner. Hahei is a summer beach town that sees a lot of day trippers. Most of the restaurants in the area were open for breakfast and lunch only (assuming they were even open at all), we grabbed some breakfast supplies from the little convenience store, and grabbed dinner.
Choice may have been limited in the evenings, but the food was still delicious! I got to check off my list trying a kiwi style burger (topped with beetroot relish and fried egg) which I thought was great. Plus they did real fruit mix-in ice cream. This was our second opportunity to try this and it was still excellent. Passion fruit is best fruit, you can't change my mind.
After a long day, we went to bed and got an adequate night's sleep. That's being generous, it was barely adequate. I am making the assumption that the person in the room next to ours forgot their CPAP because the snoring was so epically loud it woke me multiple times throughout the night. Yes we had earplugs, no it didn't help enough.
But all the same we got up bright and early so we could get to Hot Water Beach at low tide.
It's obviously a popular spot year round, that's because there is a small area of this beach that has some kind of geothermal heat source, so all you have to do is dig a little in the sand and you will find hot water. Hot enough to scald in some places, so you have to find a way to mix it with cooler water. That's how you end up with dozens of people having dug 10 or more little hot tubs in the sand and creating little channels of water to keep heat it up or cool it down.
This is only accessible for the four hours surrounding low tide, and even then we did have one little wave wash over our hot pools. This is a beautiful beach, a few people were surfing, but it's known to have riptides so it's not really recommended to swim here.
Our hostel had shovels we could borrow, so we turned a little channel into a large pool, one side was hot, the other was cold, so you just had to shift around to find the Goldilocks zone.
It was a relaxing morning, but by 11 AM the pools would start to get over run by the ocean, so we headed back to our hotel to video chat with the kids and eat some snacks. Here's some NZ dollars, in case you were wondering what the money looks like:
At 1 PM we had a kayak reserved so we picked it up and wheeled it to Hahei beach where we set off on our exploration of a few coves up the coast.
It's about a 20 minute paddle up to the famous Cathedral Cove. The hiking trail to access it was damaged in a typhoon a year ago, so by boat is the best way to see it. The water here is absolutely crystal clear and it wasn't even that cold. I may be too used to swimming in frigid Bear Lake, but it was like 60F outside, the water was colder than that, but I kind of wished we'd rented some snorkels too. The visibility was so good and Gemstone bay is popular for snorkeling.
Here's the things about sea kayaks: paddling around is easy, getting off and on less so. The waves don't care that you've got one leg off and one leg on. The size and force of any given swell is so different from the proceeding one, you never know when you'll get a nice smooth push in or be thrown unceremoniously off your kayak, forced underwater while you hold your glasses to your face (you were warned that people often lose their glasses), while your upside down kayak runs you over and drags you through the rocks and sand to the beach. Not that that happened or anything.
We paddled through Gemstone bay and hopped off at Sting Ray Bay (not the season for it's namesakes sadly) to snap a few photos. We'd put our things in a water tight little bag, but we should have just rented one because ours popped open when the kayak flipped. Lee's phone was fine, our camera was not. Unrelated, I'm now in the market for a point and click with excellent optical zoom.
When we pulled into Cathedral Cove, I opted to hop out of the kayak and swim it closer to the beach to help keep it upright. That worked pretty well, it just left me very wet and disheveled.
The ground at Cathedral Cove was declared unstable after the aforementioned typhoon, so it's very much "enter at your own risk." We did risk, and survivor bias is telling me that I'm fine therefore it is fine. You can make your own judgements.
When we picked up the kayak it was recommended that, if we were up for it, one of the tiny islands near Cathedral Cove had a sea arch we could paddle through. Our arms and shoulders were feeling pretty good, so we went for it. And it was awesome.
We paddled through from both directions and Lee braved getting his phone out of the "water tight" bag we'd stored it in for a couple photos. And yes, the water really is just that blue.
We coasted back to Hahei beach right behind another kayak who'd rented from the same place. He glided right up to the beach easily. We got carried in on a wave that tipped our kayak at a 45 degree angle, end over front, and the only reason it didn't flip was because I had already hopped off and was holding onto it keeping it upright. I know there is a lot of skill to guiding any boat around, but come on. This was clearly pure luck that not a single big wave came up behind this guy, right?
We were a bit bedraggled and getting cold after two and a half hours of paddling and accidental swimming, so it was a nice time for a warm shower and unwinding. We decided to cap our day by going to the Church Bistro (the fancy restaurant in town). It's in a repurposed church, hence the name, and had a really nice ambiance.
We declared this our early anniversary date. Happy 13th! After dinner, it was just pack up and get ready to head home in the morning! Fortunately the room next to ours was vacant, so no more foghorn to wake us every few minutes.
We made our flight in Auckland the next morning and I managed to see out the window Rangitoto Island:
And Waiheke Island:
So we left Auckland at 11 AM on Sunday, landed 11ish hours later in LAX where it was 5:30 AM Sunday, and finally made it back to Salt Lake City around 3 PM on Sunday. Time travel is real!
