Day 05: Whangarei - Hot Water Beach (Monday, August 3)

It's all downhill from here.

03.08.2009 16 °C

Up early again this morning – 6:30am. We make our way around the corner from the holiday park to Whangarei Falls and take a quick walk to the base. Very impressive! You can see how big it is from the photo below.

30 minutes later and we are back on the road heading south. Our destination today is Hot Water Beach, which is on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsular – about a 400km drive. The journey takes us back through Auckland and then heads east through some more magnificent landscape. We head up the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsular stopping briefly in Thames for a 5-star lunch of 2 minute noodles and BBQ Shapes. The road hugs the shoreline VERY closely (don't look down!) and then climbs the mountains up and down and up and down and around and around...you get the picture. The drive was extremely tiring and we were both pretty wrecked by the time we stopped. Was a very long day and we had a small drama finding the caravan site but got there in the end.

Later tonight at about 9.30, we will take a short walk the the beach to dig a hole and sit in it...during low tide the hot water springs soak up through the sand in the beach and you don't have to dig down too far to build yourself a bathtub. We'll let you know how it goes.