Day 8 on the Road
Digging Our Own Hot Pool at Hot Water Beach in the Coromandel
Day 8 is here on New Zealand’s Biggest Gap Year where we are challenging ourselves to do 365 Days: 365 Activities in New Zealand! Today we are biking to Hot Water Beach to dig our own hot pool!
It’s been so full-on the last week so we just going to take it easy today and then go check out Hot Water Beach, which is just right next door to the holiday park we’re staying in right now. To my biggest surprise we arrive at the perfect time for the tide and there was almost no one around.
Today is a noteworthy day because it’s the first day of winter but as you can see the sun is shining pretty brightly but it is actually cold. Hot Water Beach seems like your normal beach but if you actually dig a hole at low tide there’s a hot water spring that’s feeding some hot water up into the sand below and as the tide slowly comes back in, the sea water brings that hot water down to a more comfortable temperature so you can sit in your very own hot pool in the sand. Let’s go there in style, which involves hiring some bikes from the Hot Water Beach Top 10 Holiday Park and they also have some spades to hire as well to make digging those hot pools really easy.
The track down from the Top 10 Holiday Park to Hot Water Beach is very very small. So we get to Hot Water Beach. We just toss our bikes to the side – devil may care – and then head over to the prime digging spot.
I grab the spade and start shovelling and shovelling and shovelling sand, and start digging.
He’s taking forever. Hurry up. Dig me a hole. Is there any hot water yet? Come on. How’s it going? It would go faster if you were to take your spade and come and help.
I’m not mocking; I’m trying to encourage him because, you know, time is of the essence here. That tide is going to come in soon and just completely ruin the hole we are digging.
So I keep on digging. Basically you need to dig quite deep to get to the hot water and to have something quite decent to relax in. So I decide to stop when I am about ass deep.
But the problem is the water comes out about 60 degrees. 60 degrees Celsius is about something else in Fahrenheit. Man, it was hot. My feet were red.
Digging for hot water right here in Coromandel Peninsula in Hot Water Beach. My feet are pretty toasty. They are actually burning because the water is way too hot and I started digging a little too far from the beach so I don’t have enough cold water coming in. There you go. That was really welcome. Much cooler now. Now my Jacuzzi is getting better. I like it.
She did not help a single bit. Why did I get two spades? We dig ourselves a pretty cool hole and it’s pretty deep as well. It’s just a shame that it’s just a puddle in a trench. It’s really a hot pool. It’s a hot puddle. [Growling].
A cool thing about coming here in winter is obviously it’s the off-peak season in the Coromandel so there was like far less people than when we’ve been to Hot Water Beach on previous occasions. It’s been sort of in summertime and it’s usually heaving in summer. Come at off-peak season in New Zealand. So we have some hot feet at Hot Water Beach. Yeah, the surroundings are pretty cool as well. We just sat there relaxing and just watching what was going on around us.
So after we have finished dipping our toes at Hot Water Beach, we race back on the bikes back to the Top 10 Holiday Park. I don’t really know who won. Probably Robin. To be honest. Why do I even question it, I lose at everything I do.
And there’s this fat cat there that just sits in the entrance to the kitchen and meows at people so it’ll get food off them.
*sings* Oo ahh. You stroke the cat. You stroke the cat. What do you do to the cat? You stroke it…
Ok are we starting or what?
