This Kiwi Experience stop is advertised as Hot Water Beach, but really, it's the other sights on the Coromandel Peninsula that are worth seeing. After spending one final night (really this time) in Auckland, this was the first stop on the main route of the North Island tour.
We finally started meeting new people since we were now with the group we'd be traveling with full-time over the next few weeks. Kiwi Experience is a hop-on, hop-off tour, so you are welcome to stop and stay at any spot for longer if you want and catch the next bus through, but most people opt not to do that because you lose all the friends you've spent time making.
I really liked the people on our North Island bus! I found a good little group which actually included a girl who had gone to Kent State during the same time I was there. You think "it's a small world" is a cliche, but seriously.
We arrived at Hot Water Beach in the afternoon and checked into our accommodation, Hot Water Beach Holiday Park, a cool hostel that consisted of small cabins with two dorms in each. They had wooden porches connecting them all and we spent the night sitting on the couches out there drinking beer. When Kiwi Ex isn't patronizing basic bitch Base hostels, they actually choose some pretty cool lodging!
After settling in, we walked down to Hot Water Beach (it was practically across the street). It's a natural geothermal area (plenty of those around NZ), so people dig holes in the sand to create their own personal hot tubs. A cool idea in theory, but the reality was not what I was hoping for. All of the prime spots were already taken, and the heated areas were packed.
That left most people sitting in chilly pools. We decided to try anyway, so we grabbed a few shovels and started trying to dig. Unfortunately all of the water seeping into our spots was cold, so we gave up and attempted to hijack some abandoned holes. Even those were unheated, so we just gave up and my friends went swimming.
I wandered around the shoreline where there were actual hotspots, and it's crazy! You need to watch where you step because the water in some areas is actually scorching. You can take two steps away from cold water and be burning your feet a yard away. I stood on a nice warm sand area to absorb the heat for a minute, then I sat on a rock to wait for my friends and head back to the hostel.
It wasn't long before the bus left to take us to the beginning of the path to Cathedral Cove, a famous spot in NZ known for its rock formations and as one of the sites used in the Macklemore music video for "Can't Hold Us".
It was a nice walk aside from the fact that it was all uphill and I'm allergic to exercise. On the way there, we made a little stop at Stingray Bay, an enclosed little beach with trees and rocks.
Cathedral Cove was great. There's a rock arch dividing the beach into two sides, and coming through to the far side you get to see the huge rock in the water which is basically the defining feature of Cathedral Cove.
Standing beneath the rock for size comparison.
On the way back, we took a different route through a secluded grove which I much preferred to the path we'd taken there. We also stopped at Gemstone Bay, a nice little area made up of rocks and big pebbles which were visible beneath the water.
The following morning we packed up and set off early, but we made one more stop on our way to the awesome Waitomo. We went on a really cool and different hike through the Karangahake Scenic Reserve, full of caves, old train tracks, and swinging bridges over the river.
Kiwi Experience is a rushed but action-packed way to see the country, so while I'm sure you could probably find more to do around Coromandel, we did hit the highlights. Relaxing isn't my style anyway, so the next few stops were right up my alley with loads of extreme adventure activities!
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