Hahei

Ever since I saw the second Chronicles of Narnia where they walked out of the train station into the huge cave on a beach, I knew I wanted to see it in person! Now I can finally say that I did :) We left Auckland at 8 am and arrived in Hahei around 10ish, from there we walked to Cathedral Cave, which was about a 45-50 minute hike that definitely got your blood pumping several times. I took a million photos and I videotaped the whole walk back on my gopro (soon to come!). 

About 15 minutes south of Hahie is Hot Water Beach, where my mom and I attempted multiple times to dig us a nice warm hot tub on the beach. We joined the huge crowd of people digging on the beach, unfortunately the tide kept wiping away everything we had done, so we decided to relocate, not really knowing when the heat would come. Turns out, there’s a very specific place to dig and you have to figure all of that out BEFORE you start digging. Under the beach is a sort of hot spot, where seeps of steam or whatever is making it hot is coming up to the sand in certain areas. Once we figured out that you can’t just dig anywhere, we started digging our feet in the sand until they were almost burnt. So the digging began again, waves were getting stronger, we relocated again, and waves came again and again. At one point I heard a huge wave break so I stood up from the warm sand seeing how powerful it was going to be…my mom was behind me not noticing, so when the wave crashed into everyone’s holes my mom was nowhere to be seen. I thought maybe she just decided to duck under the water, so I started searching, but saw nothing. I looked around and around and finally about 15 to 20 feet behind me I find her and 3 other people basically piled on top of each other. Very entertaining! We pretty much gave up after that- it was 2:30 and low tide was at 2:45, but we didn’t really feel like digging a hole all over again. As of now, we are driving to Rotorua, a geothermal wonder! That supposedly reeks of rotten eggs…. fun! The drives up in the corromendal peninsula has been absolutely breath taking! We’ve been driving through what seems to be a tropical jungle most of the way, over cliffs and beaches. Still waiting for the fact that I’m finally here to kick in… not sure if that’ll ever happen!

Cathedral Cave Lookout--Hahei