Hot Sauce i mean Hot Water

Holla from the Coramandel peninsula. Quiggs, Andrew, Kristen and Marta, drove about 2 hours to Coramandel Town which was probably about 140 kilometers then another 2 hours to Port Jackson which was probably about 60 kilometers of just gravel road. It didnt help that the car, named Donna- pronounced with a Norwegian accent, probably only had a couple of inches clearance from the ground since it was loaded with the 5 of us, plus our camping gear, plus clothes, plus food. Needless to say every ping and scrape sound made the 5 of us cringe worried the muffler was going to fall off poor Donna as we crawled along the street at less than 20 kph. I must say that Donna proved her worth again as she must have numerous times before being a 1988 Toyota Corona, that runs like Darren Collison (good run UCLA, Florida is that tough).

Anyways the long trip there was worth it as we spent the entire next day on the beach wandering around and takin in the fact we had this entire beach to ourselves. Sunday we spent pursuing a trail to hike as well as what we thought would be a brief stop to the Hot Water Beach. It turned to be another long drive and we ended up just spending the day on the Hot Water Beach. Now you may be asking what is a "Hot Water Beach?" Well theres a natural hot spring under ground that seeps up onto the beach right where the tide of the ocean comes up. Supposedly you can dig a whole and sit in it like a hot tub, we were there to late to accomplish that but we felt the hot water springs and they were scalding hot. We even sat in them for some time as the waves crashed on us and pushed us off them. But it was the first beach where I saw some solid waves. Waves that just crashed on you and you could dive under, not the measly waves of resort towns or resort beaches, but ones where if you can't swim you shouldn't be in the water. Note I did see some serious waves at Bethel Beach on the west coast outside of Auckland, but those waves were so ridiculous you could not swim in them.

This shall be my last post for a couple weeks at least as I'm headed for a two week tour of the South Island, which promises to have everything from Wine Tasting, Hiking to Bungy Jumping crammed into it. After which I'll come back attend a couple classes and leave for 5 days in Fiji, enough said.