The rain was back today, and we were very happy that we had made our Cathedral Cove hike yesterday while the weather was cooperating. Thankfully our main goal for the day was well suited to bad weather - a visit to Hot Water Beach.
The Hahei Beach Resort let us have a late checkout, which was fantastic because you can only visit Hot Water Beach around low tide - which today was at noon, and we weren't looking forward to doing the hour long drive to our next stop in wet clothes in 50ish degree weather. As we headed out toward Hot Water Beach, we realized how fortunate we were to have the Hahei Beach Resort to ourselves - we had stayed in one of 8 "sea villas", and other than that, the place is basically a camper van spot. They literally have over 100 camper van spaces and when we asked, they said they are generally sold out during the summer season (Dec-Feb) - while we were staying we saw 2 - 4 camper vans, so traveling in the off season has a pretty distinct advantage in that regard.
Just a 10 minute drive from Hahei and we were at Hot Water Beach. We hopped out of the car, started down the beach, crossed the river (which turned out to be pretty shallow) on the beach and made our way to the point where all the action was going on.
Hot Water Beach is a pretty incredible spot, provided you have a shovel - or are good at digging in sand with your hands - you can have your own private hot tub anytime the tide goes out. A hot spring right under the sand brings up warm - and sometimes really hot - water. As you dig your hole in the beach, it fills in with water & the deeper you go generally, the warmer that water gets. Given that we were a bit tight on time, still needing to check out by 1pm, we lucked into an already dug abandoned hot tub. We dug it out a bit more, which Reef had a lot of fun with, and then settled into the warm water.
The water in our on beach hot tub was maybe 90 degrees, but by digging our toes in deep, it quickly got up to over 100 so you could have your feet nice and toasty warm. The boys had a blast - Reef jumping into our hot tub, River carrying around the shovel in the water . . . it was a really unique experience.
After 20 min or so of enjoying the hot water, we had to race back to Hahei and check out. From there Sharyl pointed the car toward Whangamatā.
Whangamatā, with a population of about 4000 is a much bigger town than Hahei, and like Hahei it is also a popular tourist destination in the summer. The town also boasts one of New Zealand's best surf breaks - the Whangamatā Bar (the wave breaks on a sandbar) - so the area has an active surf vibe.
Our Airbnb (called Book A Batch down here) turned out to be a dive, it smelled super musty and moldy the second we walked in, and there were 1000 things River could hurt himself with. So Sharyl immediately started searching for a better option. While she did that, Reef and I fired up the full size Arcade game of ‘Street Fighter’ which they had in their game room (though smelly and musty, the place had a lot of games). Growing up, Street Fighter was my favorite Arcade game, and it was one of only 3 or 4 games they had at Ices Creams And Dreams in Paia (now Milagros - but formerly Maui’s best Ice Cream store + mini arcade), so I definitely spent a lot of quarters playing it as a kid. Reef loved playing Street Fighter and kept asking if the characters we were controlling were superheroes (which I said they were for simplicity sake).
Sharyl managed to find an awesome alternative spot, and while we were waiting for the owner to verify the new place was ready for last minute guests, we stopped into a killer Indian restaurant called Chilli Cove. Odd name for an Indian place, but the food was incredible - and it was very warm and dry - which was a welcome change from the constant downpour & frigid air outside.
Before too long, we were checked into the new spot, and Sharyl was able to verify with the prior place that we would get a refund - which was not really expected, but definitely good news. We ended the evening further cementing the card game Speed (which we introduced him to in Russell) into Reef’s memory and introducing a new one… War. It is fun watching Reef enjoy the games his mom & dad grew up playing. Tomorrow we are looking forward to exploring Whangamatā!
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