Coromandel

Almost two months ago (22.-23.8) I spent the weekend at Coromandel with a German and a French. And I actually hadn't met them before, I just saw Valerie's (German) post in one of the backpacking groups in FB that she's going there and thought, why not go with her. You must think I'm crazy that I'm travelling with total strangers but here it's totally normal. Everyone has come here to travel so almost everyone ends up travelling with strangers at some point during their stay here.

We left early Saturday morning since it took about two to three hours to drive there. We stopped a few times along the way for some photos but the first actual stop was at Cathedral Cove. We weren't so lucky with the weather but at least it didn't rain at all during that day.

 

After Cathedral Cove, we did a little walk up a hill near Hahei Beach. This was a perfect little walk since it didn't take too long because we had to go for the next place quite soon.

 

After the walk we went down to the beach and tried this swing. It was so much fun! Even though a bit scary at first. I was so scared I'd hit the rocks.

 

Then we drove to Hot Water Beach. Which was a pretty cool place! "Its name comes from underground hot spirings which filter up through the sand between the high and low water tidal reaches. Within two hours either side of low tide, it is possible to dig into the sand allowing hot water to escape to the surface forming a hot water pool. The water, with a temperature as hot as 64 °C..." So at the beach, we dug a hole and went standing and sitting in the hot water. It was so weird. But so cool. And sometimes the water was so burning hot that you couldn't stand there for more than just a few seconds. We were there until it became dark and then we drove a bit closer to the places we visited the next day. At first we planned on booking a hostel but we ended up sleeping in Valerie's car since there was enough room for the three of us.