March 3, 2011
Before I go any further, let me tell you about Hot Water Beach. It is located near the Coramandel Peninsula in New Zealand and it is one of a kind. People travel from all over New Zealand and Europe to see this beach. Hot Water Beach is well known for its hot water that you can dig to in the sand. At low tide every day, there are about 100 meters where you can dig a hole in the sand and reach hot water. The water is hot and so is the sand because of the volcanic activity underneath the Earth’s surface. So cool and such an experience. During low tide the beach is covered with people digging in the sand to make their hot water pools to relax in. Okay back to my experience there.
On Friday, March 4 I woke up just before dawn to try to watch the sun rise from our deck, but it was pretty cloudy. I loved being out there on the deck though and the view was still gorgeous. I sat there and read my conference edition of the Ensign for about an hour before anyone else woke up. It was so nice and just what I needed to start a great day.
Around 8 o’clock that morning all of the girls in the house I was in were up and Natalie took us to explore the beach. She used to come up here every summer with her family and know exactly where to go exploring. We started by going down to the beach and then climbing up through a cave and back to the beach. Pretty fun. We then hiked up through some rainforest in flip flops of course. We were basically charting our own course through what used to be some Maori land. It was pretty fun. We climbed over and through trees and broke down many a spider webs before having to turn and go back down because it got way to swampy even for Natalie.
We went back down to the beach and walked up the coast along the water. I walked up talking to Diana and Christine and then went on exploring on the rocks by myself. While I was jumping the rocks, I saw some pretty big as crabs. Bigger than I have ever seen before, but it is pretty fun to jump big rocks in the ocean. It was so nice just to look out at the waves crashing over the rocks and onto the beach. I just love being able to spend a Friday in March at the beach and take a vacation from vacation. I walked back up the beach with Whitney and Anna and when we caught up to some of the other girls, we took some pics on the rocks and jumped off of them. Pretty fun. It is cool to think that all of the rock we were on used to be completely underwater and part of the Pacific Ocean. We went to get some of our beach stuff and some boogie boards and shovels from the house.
When we came back down to the beach we went over to where you can dig the hot water pools and stood in a large circle in the water staking out our spot for a few hours. We had to wait until the tide was out to start digging our hole (around 1:30). But I could already feel the hot water if I stuck my feet down into the sand. Some of the spots were so hot, you could hardly stand there without burning your feet, and you could see boiling water coming up from the sand. It was so cool. We goofed off and played some games, but never left our spot because if we did it would have been taken because so many people come to do this on the beach. At low tide we started to dig our shovels into the sand and dig a big hole. We had to use some of the boogie boards to help support our walls so they wouldn’t be knocked down by the outgoing tide. We dug in the sand for about an and had 2 holes, one with boiling hot water and one with perfect bath water. After our hard work to make the holes, a bunch of us girls sat down to relax after our hard work and it was hard work. I was pretty sore later that night and the next day. It was so nice to be able to just relax in our little pool of warm water. It would be nice if there were more beaches like this one in the world. I am so grateful I had the opportunity to have a part of this unique fun experience.
I went out on the boogie boards with Katie, Jess, Heidi, Janet, Christine, and Anna. We had so much fun. We were able to go out pretty far and still touch but had to be pretty carful because the waves and under toe were so strong. I loved it. I paddled out pretty far and caught some great waves that brought me back in pretty fast. It felt like I was flying on top of the waves, and I kinda was. I spent a couple of hour out there just catching the waves. Boogie boarding is definitely one of my new favorite things and I can’t wait to teach my brother to do it back home. I was pretty exhausted afterwards and went back up to the other house we had rented to have lunch.
I then went back down and sat on the beach for a while with most of the other girls. It was so nice to just sit and relax on the beach. I then decided I wanted to climb up and sit on this big rock that was near us. Kara went up there with me and we sat up there and talked for about an hour. I just loved it and the view from the top of the rock was even more gorgeous. I cicada got near some of the girls lying below and they freaked out and it came up by us, which I didn’t mind at all because I used to love looking for their shells and listening to them when I was little. I remember finding them all over my grandparent’s old house on Ransdell every summer as a kid. Just before high tide, we headed back in because if we didn’t we would have had to swim around the rocks to get back because of the tide, which is pretty dangerous at this beach. Kara and I then went over and sat outside where the Jacob’s were living in some hammocks. It was so relaxing. I just loved it so much. Hammocks are one of my favorite things.
We made another delicious spaghetti dinner. We have had spaghetti so many times here, but it is easy and good and we made sure not to serve any naked spaghetti because Dr. Jacobs taught us never to serve naked spaghetti because the Italians never do. After dinner Linda shared some of her M&Ms with us and Janet taught us how to suck up our M&Ms off the table. It was pretty funny. We had a few races to see who could suck up five the fastest. Then we played triangle of death and couches, which was so much fun. I just love playing different games.
Natalie then took some of the girls on a walk to see the glow worms. I didn’t have torch/flash light, so I got lost trying to find the girls. It was nice to just walk along in the dark though. I then went back and watched 500 days of summer and stayed up laughing and talking with the girls at my house. It was such a fun amazing day. I love vacation from vacation.
On Saturday March 4, about half of us girls woke up really early and walked down to the beach to watch the sunrise. It was pretty gorgeous even though some of the clouds. I just love watching the sunset or rise on the beach. We checked out of the cabins around 10 am and drove up to Cathedral Cove. Cathedral Cove is where Prince Caspian was filmed for the scene where the kids arrive back in Narnia and run along the beach into the ocean. It was raining pretty hard when we got there, which I hadn’t prepared for, but that didn’t stop me. We couldn’t go all the way down to the cove because of some current rock slides; we went hiked through the mud down to one bay away from it. Cathedral Cove was a gorgeous sight. I would have loved to go kayaking through it. I hiked through the mud in rain in flip flops and a skirt. If I can do that successfully and have fun, I can do just about anything. Everyone had such, muddy feet and after trying to get some of the mud off with the rainwater in the parking lot, a few of us just decided to go barefoot for the rest of the day.
After Cathedral Cove we headed back to Auckland, stopping in Thames for lunch, where the window in Jim’s rental car came out. It was pretty funny. We stopped by James’s house on the way back and talked to a friend of his that makes custom greenstone and bone jewelry including CTR rings. Pretty cool. Nancy and I came back exhausted from an amazing weekend. It was an amazing 2 days that I will never forget and I enjoyed every minute of it. I just love being in New Zealand!!
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