From the Coromandel peninsula to Rotorua

Thursday November 1st we pick up the van and start our long awaited road trip! It rains again today, for our first day on the road… but nothing can take away our excitement. After doing a quick tour of the van we go to the closest supermarket, Pack’n’save, for our first grocery shopping. It will take us over an hour, since we have to buy literally everything we need for the next few days.

And then off we go! Matt starts driving on the left side of the road and with the steering wheel on the right side of the car, which means changing gears with the left hand… also now the blinkers are on the right and the windshield wipers on the left side of the steering wheel… so you can guess that the first time we had to turn, Matt started his windshield wipers instead of the blinkers! We drive towards the Coromandel region, located on the North-East coast of the country.

It starts raining and the wind shield wipers are pretty bad, but then given the weather, it looks like you have to change them every two weeks down here!

Half way there we stop for a quick lunch break, and our first meal in the van.

Quickly after hitting the road again, it starts to rain very heavily, it evens hails in areas. All that added to winding mountain roads and Maider is laughing at Matt, telling him that if he is able to drive under these roads conditions, he can drive anywhere! Hoping we won’t have these conditions for the entire 3 weeks…

Coromandel penisnsula

We arrive at Hahei early afternoon, this town is the starting point to go visit Cathedral Cove. Cathedral Cove is certainly one of the most famous beaches in New Zealand. Indeed, its arch was a setting in the movies ” Chronicles of Narnia” for example.

But when we arrive the rain is still pouring down, and it doesn’t seem like it is going to stop soon. After checking the weather forecast, it looks like tomorrow will be beautiful, so we decide to postpone what we wanted to do today. Instead we go and search for a spot to spend the night. We find a place 10 miles north of Hahei, along Cooks Beach.

The place is pretty cute, with a small beach right by it, unfortunately the weather isn’t nice enough to go for a swim.

We spend the rest of the afternoon in the van, organizing our stuff and getting some rest. We will go to bed early tonight, we know we will have an early rise tomorrow. Our bed is super comfortable!

We wake up at 6 am, and leave the campsite around 6:30 and head back to Hahei, to finally go visit Cathedral Cove. The hike starts along the beach.

The weather is beautiful today and we are all alone. We were even the first car on the parking lot. The view is beautiful. The ocean is calm and smooth. There is no wind and no clouds at all. We can see from afar plenty of little islands.

And at times we walk through the forest where we can see very nice flowers.

We get to Cathedral Cove a little before 8 am and have the place almost to ourselves. Only very few people are here, so we have plenty of time to take pictures and admire the view.

And more importantly we are at low tide, which means we can walk under the arch and go to the other side of the beach.

We take plenty of pictures. The site is magnificent. Maider feels like she’s in the “Narnia Chronicles”. Matt feels like… he’s on a beach, since he hasn’t seen the movies!

The sky is beautiful and we take our time taking in the scenery and wander along the beach.

On the way back we took a little detour that brings us to a lookout. We walk across a field and walk along the cliffs.

We get to the lookout and we are amazed. The view is stunning.

The ocean in the bottom is turquoise blue.

We can see a part of the Cathedral Cove beach bellow.

And understand why it is a nice snorkeling spot, the water is really clear. Once again we are alone and spend a while admiring the view.

On the way back we stop often to look at the view. We even stop a moment at the Hahei beach.

We then hop back in the van and drive to Hot Water Beach, a few miles further. Hot Water Beach is one of the highlights of the region. It is the hottest beach on earth, thanks to a hot water source just underneath the beach. At low tide, it is possible to dig deep in the sand, and build your own hot tub. We thought it was possible to do that anywhere on the beach, but it happens that you can only do it on a small portion of the beach, where the hot water source is. It is easy to find, simply follow the people!

A cluster of people is gathered in a small area of the beach, all with their shovels and digging their hot tub. When we arrive, the place is packed, there are people everywhere in this tiny area. We really don’t feel like being stuck in the middle of this, especially because the beach is huge and beautiful. So we decide to walk a little further.

And because the beach is beautiful, and the water so clear, we decide to go for a swim. We first put our feet in, and it is soooo cold. No hot water here! But it is the only opportunity we will get to go for a swim on the North Island, also we don’t know what the weather will be going forward, so it’s now or never! The water is very cold, so we won’t stay long, long enough to take pictures though! A great refreshing experience.

Right next to the beach there are showers, so we take advantage to take a quick shower, not knowing when the next one will be.

After all that we leave Hot Water Beach to go to Rotorua, 140 miles south, where we will spend the night. The first part of the drive takes us along the Bay of Plenty. We stop at many lookouts, that offer incredible views on the ocean and the forest. We have blue skies the entire way, what a change from yesterday!

For lunch we stop at Bowentown, still along the Bay of Plenty. And we find an incredible spot, with an amazing view. We are at the tip of a small peninsula and we can see the Mayor Island across the ocean. This island is home to a big forest and beautiful white sand beaches. Amazing!

From this lookout we can see a beautiful beach bellow.

And some stairs lead to a hidden beach.

We are really glad with the spot we picked for lunch! There is a nice little picnic table, with view on the ocean. We couldn’t dream for a better spot.

Rotorua

Early afternoon we continue driving towards Rotorua and arrive there early evening. We go check out the two only free campsite of the city but both are packed and we cannot park anywhere else. Guess we arrived too late! So we go to a regular paying campsite… At least we will have hot water, showers, electricity and even a hot water pool!

Where we will spend some time to relax before opening a bottle of New Zealander champagne to celebrate our 5 year anniversary! We couldn’t dream for a better way to celebrate than during a road trip in New Zealand. Awesome!

Rotorua is our second stop of the road trip. The reason? Because of its geothermal activity. Indeed the city is built on top of the meeting of two tectonic plates. The underground activity is pretty intense, you can even smell the sulfur from the city. And the area is home to many geysers and hot springs that we can visit.

The city is nicknamed “Sulfur City” because of the hydrogen sulphide emissions. And quickly when you arrive in the city you can smell this very particular smell of old fart !

After a night in Rotorua, we leave the next morning to visit the nearby Wai-O-Tapu park. This park is a huge geothermal area, and the name means “sacred waters” in maori. Here we can see geysers, boiling mud and pools of different colors because of the different minerals present. We quickly understand why this was elected by TripAdvisor as one of the top 20 most incredible sites in the world. It is often compared to the Yellowstone park in the US.

We start our visit with the Lady Knox geyser.

Every day at 10:15 am, the geyser is artificially activated to release its pressure and erupt. Which is a nice spectacle, if you put aside all the Chinese fighting to take 100 times the exact same pic 😉 .

We then start visiting the park itself along a 2 mile long trail. The first part goes through areas where we can see smoke coming out of the ground.

The landscape looks like the moon, with craters of different sizes. Some of which have boiling mud at the bottom.

After all these craters, we get to the highlight of the park : the Artist’s Palette, a beautiful natural wonder.

The colors are amazing.

Right next by, there is also the Champagne Pool with equally stunning colors.

The Champagne Pool is a 200 ft diameter pool, that is as deep as it is wide. The name comes from the bubbles that rise to the surface. We will stay a while admiring this unreal spectacle. It is so beautiful and fascinating.

We continue our walk towards the Primrose Terrace.

Then the trail takes us on wooden walkways where we can admire nature’s work, with its little pools, boiling mud and smoke coming from out of nowhere.

At the end of the trail we get to the Ngakoro lake, its green color offers a stunning contrast with the surroundings.

The lake is pretty big and there is even a small waterfall.

As we continue we stumble upon a local bird, the Pied Stilt, who apparently doesn’t mind the acidity of the water.

We are almost at the end of the visit and walk again by fuming craters.

And as we get closer to the visitor center we stop by a fluorescent green lake.

Absolutely amazing what nature can do. It feels like we are in some kind of chemical lab. We take pictures from every possible angle, it is hard to stop staring at it.

We stayed about 2 hours in the park, and simply loved it! The visit is definitely worth it. Unfortunately we had a grey sky all morning long, the colors must be even more stunning when the sun comes out, but at least it didn’t rain.

We leave the park a little before lunch and hit the road towards the Tongariro National Park, where we plan on doing a hike the next day. We are not sure we will be able to do the hike since the shuttles have been canceled all week long because of bad weather. Because the decision to cancel or not the shuttle is taken the same morning at 7:30 am, we have no choice but to go there and hope we will have good enough weather. We stop in a free campground close by for the night and cross our fingers.