New Zealand, Coromandel Peninsula: Scary Coastal Roads to Find Hot Water Beach

During our first campervan drive across New Zealand countryside, we decided to follow the Pacific Coast Highway as soon as we could after leaving Auckland, where we had started our trip in the land of Kiwis. By joining highway 25 at Waitakaruru, we travelled east towards Pipiroa to ensure we were headed in the correct direction. Soon after, at the intersection with highway 26, highway 25 veered north along the western coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. That was the route we took to kick off our afternoon in the area.

The drive up the coastal highway towards the northern end of The Coromandel, as the peninsula has been known to be called, took us along curvy, narrow roads that were difficult for a first-time driver of a campervan to manoeuvre, but we somehow made it through the afternoon with Kyle's driving skills and Dan's navigation skills fully intact and much improved. It was a good thing that we got the practice in because we ended up doing a lot of driving that day. After touring The Coromandel and doing a hike on its eastern coast, which you will read about further down this page, we continued our journey south to Matamata, the next destination we had planned to explore.

Visitors to Hot Water Beach could dig a hole in the sand and sit inside it while it fills will hot water from underground thermal springs

Along the western coast, between the two towns of Thames and Coromandel Town, we saw an expansive dramatic coastline with many beautiful beaches, rugged mountain ranges, small villages and seaside cliffs. Don't worry - the west coast of the peninsula had its fair share of these things, too. The Hauraki Gulf on the east side didn't appear as beautiful as we had expected it to when we started driving along the coastal road, but that was primarily because of the poor weather we experienced when we drove around the peninsula.

The sky was dark and gloomy with many thick clouds blocking most of the sunlight, and even though it wasn't really raining, a slight drizzle hit Bessie's windshield during parts of the drive. Bessie, by the way, was the name we gave our campervan, and we mentioned that in the last journal entry, which you may need to go back and read if you were questioning who Bessie actually was. Her attitude throughout the month we spent in New Zealand was that of a complacent and happy-go-lucky one. We didn't have any trouble whatsoever (touch wood, because, at the time of writing this journal entry, we have to turn her in tomorrow and will need to drive her one more day).

Both of us were really nervous during the coastal drive on the west coast because the roads became so narrow at times that Kyle was literally driving with Bessie's outer wheels on the loose gravel shoulder. Conveniently (not!), it was at those times that the road shrank to almost one lane, and there was no shortage of traffic barrelling towards us. Miraculously, we are still alive to write this tale, but our stress levels were definitely heightened that afternoon!

Many older towns in New Zealand had a certain "gold rush" or "wild west" look to them, where older buildings had been preserved. We immediately recognised that fact during our trip around The Coromandel, which itself had a colourful gold mining history, and we continued to see similar towns throughout our month in the country. Since that type of building presence was a consistent sighting for us, we may not mention it again, but it was interesting to see similarities between New Zealand towns and American wild west towns that we had visited during the "US and A" portion of our 2007 trip around the world.

The main purpose of our trip to The Coromandel was in order to do a hike to Cathedral Cove, on the eastern coast, and to see what the fuss was about at Hot Water Beach, near the small town of Hahei. By driving around the peninsula, we knew some amazing coastal views would be in store for us even if the weather wasn't the greatest, so we included The Coromandel in our itinerary.

After driving up the western coast to Coromandel Town, we cut across the mountains to start travelling down the eastern coast. New Zealand was a country covered with rolling hills, mountain ranges and other rugged landscapes. It's so hard to put the beauty of the country into words because you really must travel within the country yourself to gain the true impact of the scenery there. Our first drive through the mountains in New Zealand left a lasting impression on us, but we had more than three weeks of continuous lasting impressions in front of us, and we hope that you stay with us and read each of the subsequent journal entries that we write.

The drive from Coromandel Town to Hahei, where the trailhead to Cathedral Cove was located, took us over an hour because the roads were much the same as they had been on the western side of the peninsula. When we arrived at the car park where we started our hike to the famous cove, we parked Bessie and looked up at a fairly clear sky. The weather was much better on the eastern side of the peninsula and we were very happy with the change. Even with the skies being clearer, there were a couple of sporadic sprinkles during our two hour long hike, but they lasted no more than five or ten minutes and hardly got us wet. Besides the rain, there was one section of our hike where the wind picked up quite a bit, and it was our first exposure to strong New Zealand winds, but we were warm during the majority of the walk as the sun heated us from above.

The hike took us through native New Zealand "bush", where we basically saw many unique plants, trees and flowers that originated in New Zealand. We were surprised at how dense the foliage was during our hike, and we were astonished to see such a myriad of unusual items that neither of us had seen before. For example, we saw several cabbage trees, which looked like yucca plants growing at the end of tree branches. Also, ferns were abundant in New Zealand; there were many different varieties, both small and large.

New Zealand had it own native palm tree - that surprised us! When we arrived in Auckland a few days earlier, we spotted several of the trees lining Queen Street in the city centre. The palm fronds grew more upwards than other palm trees we have seen, giving the trees an unusual shape. In the Auckland area and northern part of the North Island, we saw orange and lemon trees growing on front lawns of houses that we passed. Besides the fruit and palm trees, though, New Zealand's native bush looked somewhat prehistoric like us; we could easily see the wild-looking trees and plants existing on planet Earth millions of years ago in another period of life. That was truer of the South Island vegetation because, unfortunately, most of the North Island was cleared for farmland when the Europeans settled in the country. One thing we were happy about during our trip in New Zealand was that we chose springtime to visit; we saw so many unique, beautiful and fragrant flowers, and almost every bush and tree was blooming when we were there.

The path we took to Cathedral Cove branched off at one point, offering us the chance to see some ancient puriri trees. We chose to walk the extra 20 minutes so we could see them and we were led through a thick, mossy grove of the ancient trees, which were tall, thin and lightly coloured grey. In the middle of our hike, we walked along the crest of a hill and could see the beautiful coastline and ocean, as well as a couple of rock formations jutting up out of the water. We couldn't see Cathedral Cove because it was hidden from our line of sight and, since we were eager to get there, we picked up our pace and started walking downhill to the secluded beach.

As soon as we stepped foot onto the beach at Cathedral Cove, we knew the hike getting there had been worth the effort. The last couple of minutes on the path had us climbing down many steps to the beach, which was a clean sandy beach in an alcove. There were cliff walls around us and the beach was completely private. The only other access to the beach, apart from the obvious water access, was a cave that had been carved over time in one of the cliff walls near the shoreline. At low tide, it was possible to walk through the cave on dry sand, but at high tide, feet would surely get wet. We didn't want wet feet for the walk back to the car park and were thankful that it was low tide. To get a view of the private beach next to Cathedral Cove, we walked through the cave passageway and saw another beautiful setting.

There were a few other people on the beach. One insane Kiwi thought it would be a good idea to go for a swim in the icy cold water, and a Spanish tourist stubbed his toe really badly on a rock and had to limp back up the stairs when he left just before we did (we quickly passed him instead of following slowly behind). Even though it was Spring, we couldn't get ourselves to take a dip because we had just spent five weeks in very hot tropical climates where the water we swam in was more like warm bath water than iced water. There wasn't much to do on the beach and we wanted to continue our drive south along the peninsula's eastern edge, so we took the obligatory photographs and started climbing all of the stairs, in front of the injured Spaniard, that we had climbed down nearly half an hour before.

When we made it back to the car park, we ordered a couple of iced coffees from a woman selling them at the exit to the trail. We sat in our campervan and drank them whilst basking in the heat we felt coming through the large side windows, since the sun was shining strongly at that part of our day. It was time to go after we finished our coffees, and Kyle grabbed the keys whilst Dan grabbed the New Zealand Road Atlas we had bought at the start of our road trip. Hot Water Beach was next and located really close to Hahei so we didn't have much driving to make our way there.

Apparently, visitors to Hot Water Beach could dig a hole in the sand and sit inside it while it fills will hot water from underground thermal springs. Our New Zealand Lonely Planet guide suggested a time of day to visit the beach, but we hadn't paid much attention and thought there would be signs explaining what we needed to do once we arrived at the beach. The book also said there would be people there renting out shovels to use for digging holes. We didn't see anyone on the beach except for groups of birds, both animal and human. A small group of girls made up the human ones (one Malaysian and three South Koreans), and the animal ones were seagulls and a couple of other species of birds that we couldn't place.

We walked along the long stretch of beach for ten minutes to the area where we thought we could see a hot water pool that someone else had dug. We wanted to ask someone if we could stick our hands in their pool to see how hot the water was because we hadn't planned on swimming in one ourselves. The only people around were the Asian girls and they didn't have a clue about the hot water either. The Malaysian girl was impressed, though, with the words we had learnt when we visited her home country in January!

On the road just outside the car park at Hot Water Beach, we had our first up-close glimpse of a possum. The possums in New Zealand were actually Australian possums that were introduced to the country many years ago. The marsupials (can anyone tell us if American "opossums" are marsupials, or if they are related to Australian "possums"?) have since become massive pests in the country, with around 70 million of the creatures eating through tonnes and tonnes of foliage daily, and destroying New Zealand's natural forests.

If you would like a glimpse of an Australian possum, you can look at our photo album, but be warned - the animal was long dead and it may make you queasy. The dead possum wasn't the only one we saw whilst driving around the two main islands in New Zealand; in fact, we were hoping to hit some ourselves because Kiwis liked it when the pests were eradicated. We only managed to hit a couple of innocent sparrows and we felt really guilty and sad when we saw them fall out of the sky and bounce on the road behind our vehicle as we sped along like hit-and-run drivers.

When we got back into Bessie to drive to Matamata, we were impressed again with how green everything was around us. Even the farmlands full of sheep and cows had thick, green carpets of grass for the animals to graze upon when they weren't lounging about taking a nap. If countries had a national colour, we would have given New Zealand green as theirs, but many Kiwis would argue that black would be a better choice, to keep in line with their revered All Blacks rugby team. Speaking of rugby, we found out the morning we left Auckland for The Coromandel that England lost the Rugby World Cup Final against South Africa. Better luck next time!

Originally, we had planned on going to Rotorua that evening, but we decided to spend the night in Matamata so we could go on a Lord of the Rings film set tour at a local farm near the town. Hobbiton, here we come! We decided to test out our campervan's potential so we slept in a motel car park for free. That marked the first of many nights where we would sleep at the side of the road or in a car park instead of paying for a campervan site. Everything worked out well except that it became much colder as the evening progressed. Sleep came easy, though, as we had a full and tiring day behind us.