New Zealand week 2

We have done a lot of exploring and hiking on the north island. We started in Welington, where we spent 2 nights with family of the people we stayed with in Perth. Once again, we were treated like family, fed really good food, had great conversations and learnt so much about the area. It's always  hard to leave good people. It was again this time. 

We visited the BEST museum ever! It was pretty amazing!  It kept our interest all afternoon. 

We drove past the town of Rotarua. We went there 6 years ago and I really wanted to see the thermal area again. 

In Tauranga  we had to go climb up another mountain. Just because. It was a great view of the bay and Miranda seems to find hiking a little better. 

            

We drove up the coast to the coramandal peninsula. It is an amazing, somewhat scary ride through very winding , mountainous, narrow roads with no guard rails. The view was continuously more and more beautiful. We ended up at an area called cathedral cove. We hiked along the mountain for about 1/2 an hour to the cove. It was very cool. The tide was low, so we were able to walk through it.

Then we went to hot water beach We dug holes into the sand and the hot water bubbled up into the holes. The water, with a temperature as hot as 64°C, filters up from two underground fissures to the surface where the beach meets the Ocean. The natural springs are only found in 2 small areas. So you have to go look for the area when the tide is low. As the tide comes back in, the holes are washed away until the next low tide. We could have spent way longer there, but there were to many people for Colton, and Miranda forgot her bathing suit. 

Today we returned to the other side of the coramandal. We came to do some rock collecting and tomorrow some fishing. We are staying in our first hotel since the hostel in South Africa. It will be nice to just relax and do our own thing tonight. 

We found this little gem on Air B&B.