More reasons why we love Coromandel Peninsula

We absolutely love the Coromandel Peninsula. We stayed a bit longer than anticipated because it’s so stunning. There are so many incredible things to see and do. Exhibit A: Cathedral Cove.

Cathedral Cove

We did a short hike down to this bay to see this extraordinary cove. The beach was packed when we got there, and we did a bit of swimming in the ocean.

View from inside Cathedral Cove

Exhibit B: the people are just so darn nice here!  After doing our hike from Fletcher’s Bay to Stony Bay (aka our half marathon on the Coromandel Peninsula and also, Exhibit C), we stopped at a park on the coast to cook lunch. A fisherman was heading out, and he didn’t have enough room in his cooler (so we suspect, or maybe he was just that nice). He gave us fresh snapper he had just caught–and it had to have been a good 10 oz of snapper! So we ate well for dinner. We cooked fresh snapper and made a coconut rice with broccoli, carrots & corn. It was delicious.

Delicious dinner at our holiday park

Exhibit D: Later, we enjoyed our own personal hot tub at Hot Water Beach. There’s geothermal activity underneath the beach, so at low tide you can dig a hole and there’s boiling water underneath (up to 64 degrees Celsius, which is approximately 145 degrees Fahrenheight!).

A “hot tub” at hot water beach

Seth figured out a clever way to make it a bit less hot (since the first hole we dug was too boiling to sit in). He dug a hole where the water was boiling, then dug one closer to the tide, so we got some of the ocean water in our hot tub. Then he dug a mote from the hot one to our warm one. We got some lovely hot water trickling into our tub, and some very cool ocean water as well.

Seth is a great digger!