Day 171, 172, 173 - Coromandel region, North Island - Wednesday 4th, Thursday 5th, Friday 6th April 2012

We woke up and were glad we'd survived the night without a tree collapsing on us or the van overturning - it was a really windy night! We'd stayed at a DOC site and once we were up and ready we discovered there was a nearby waterfall so decided to do the hour walk to have a look. Well after an hour we reached it and were a little disappointed - Soph said we'd seen much bigger, thank god she's never said that to me before!!! After the waterfall we headed back down the path the way we came in so we saw the same scenes just in reverse, we keep saying that they should have a different way in and out to make it more interesting (am I sounding old?!). Anyway back to the car and we drove up the coast towards Haehi. Here is where they have, the locally famous, hot water beach which we decided to see tomorrow as we'd already missed the low tide. So we went to the local caravan park, whilst picking up some fresh bread, cheese and pate on the way and settled down to all that food… oh and a whole bottle of locally grown red wine - we slept well!!

Today was pretty cold and very windy so we sorted the van and did all the boring necessaries that campervan people never tell you about, like emptying the sink waste, topping up the water tanks, scrubbing 1000 dead flies off the windscreen etc etc. Once Soph had done all that and I'd finished doing my hair we set off to Hot Water beach!! As luck would have it (not), the local school were on a day trip to the same destination, it was packed with very excitable screaming kids - very funny to watch… It gets the name hot water beach because when the tide is out you can dig a hole about 2 foot deep and you hit a natural hot water spring. The local businesses take full advantage of this by selling spades for $15 to dig your hole with. We skipped on the spade and just dig with our hands and feet - the water was so hot! And kids were screaming about finding hot water like they had found gold, it was hilarious! After the beach we had a quick drove round to Coromandal town and a walk around and found the best, most laid back, cool café in the whole of NZ. It was a café with chilled music, homemade food, cakes and juices and had loads of second hand books for sale for about $4 each. They also had free internet with no restrictions on memory (very very unusual in NZ) so we used that to download some films and season five of entourage (awesome) and also update the blog. We were there so long we even watched sunset whilst drinking some herbal tea - dreadlocks next for me!!!

As the light was fading fast we hoped back in the camper and drove further up the coast and found DOC site on the beach. It was a perfectly clear night so me and Soph strolled down the beach in the moonlight before heading to bed to gaze at the stars and moon.