Whitianga and Cathedral Cove

We'd finished our muesli yesterday so today we were back to toast with peanut butter and jam. However, we did eat it outside in the sunshine. It was still cold though. Today we planned to do the east side of the Coromandel peninsula so set off from our hostel quite early. Well it was early for us (about 8am). We headed straight across to Whitianga (it's worth following all these places on a map maybe) which would be our base for this evening. It took us around an hour and we parked up to have a little stroll. This is when we realised we'd been driving far too much and we may end up spending a lot on fuel. Our tank was already down to a quarter and would need filling up tomorrow. However, we didn't let that get us down and enjoyed the views out over the sea from the south end of Whitianga. We found a cave that we thought was cool before getting back in the car and driving half an hour down the road to the famous hot water beach. It was famous because two hours either side of low tide you can dig a hole and sit in hot water. It's something to do with some hot plates under the sand and because you dig so close to the sea water rises up when you dig. It sounded amazing but unfortunately we'd got to the beach about an hour too late. We hadn't had any wifi so couldn't google it. Really we should have asked someone but it was still a lovely beach to see. We walked along part of it before going into a cafe by the beach for a hot chocolate. It wasn't very warm but the sun was out so we sat outside and enjoyed our yummy drinks. 

In the car again, we drove around 5 kilometres up the road to Hahei, a small town (more like a village) by the sea. From here we drove a kilometre north of town and parked up to eat our lunch. This was the cathedral cove car park. We realised earlier in the day that we'd stupidly forgotten our nice sausage pasta leftovers in the fridge at the last hostel. Matt nearly cried at this realisation. This meant that on our way to the car park we had to buy some bread at a stupidly expensive convenience store. Luckily we had peanut butter and jam in the car so we didn't need to buy anything extra. It was lovely and sunny when we sat overlooking the cliffs and some little islands out to sea. Cathedral cove itself was a 45 minute walk away though so when we'd finished eating we set off. The lovely walk took us along the coast so we could check out some spectacular views. And Cathedral cove was even better. There was a fabulous natural walkway in the rock that took you through to one side of the beach and at the far side of the other beach was a little mini waterfall. The cove was like some secret magical place that unfortunately quite a lot of people knew about. However, that didn't spoil it for us. 

We sat on the beach for a while before walking back to the car. Another 45 minutes later and we were in the car and heading back to Whitianga to check in and find a supermarket. However, on the way back we passed a place called the Coroglen tavern so we had a quick stop for a butterscotch latte and used their free wifi. The latte was pretty terrible. We didn't stay long and soon found ourselves at the supermarket buying our tea. 

The hostel we'd booked for tonight was right by the sea. The lovely lady at reception gave us extra free wifi codes and made us feel special. As we were right by the sea we decided to walk along the beach and check out the town. The town was small and instead we found a very cheap fish and chip shop. We already had our tea for tonight but Matt couldn't resist buying some chips. We then thought they'd be good with our burgers we'd got (they were on special offer) so we ran back to the hostel in order to keep the chips warm. I quickly fried the burgers (super healthy) and steamed some veg so we could enjoy our meal. It was quite nice to start with until you feel the fattiness take over and you regret eating it. I also discovered that Matt isn't a huge fan of chips. Or any potato things. He just couldn't resist a bargain. 

This hostel had a good selection of films to watch so we'd borrowed the Lord of the Rings (the fellowship of the ring) to watch as we have booked a tour of Hobbiton for tomorrow (very exciting). The section of the hostel we were in basically had its own TV room and so only a French guy joined us to watch the film (it wasn't the extended version). We became far too giddy about tomorrow whenever we saw parts of the Shire on screen.