It’s November and summer’s arrived so we head-off for a weekend’s camping on the  Coromandel Peninsular which is about 100 mile from Auckland. It’s our first visit to the Coromandel.

After a three hour drive we arrive at Ha Hei and check into the campsite which is 20m from the beach. It’s very pleasant and the weather is great.

We spend the afternoon on the deserted beach body boarding and lazing around before jumping in the car and heading a short distance along the coast to Hot Water beach.

Here, when the tide is out, you can dig into the sand with a shovel (which you can hire from the cafe) and make yourself a hot bath – a thermal feature pushes very hot water up through the sand (in some areas it was too hot to walk through the water), which when mixed withe the cold sea water in the right measure makes a pleasant bath in which to relax.

We dig ourselves and array of pools and then, as the tide comes in, fight like King Canute to stop too much of the cold sea water from making our ‘baths’  too cold.  Eventually our defences are overpowered and the hot water fun id diluted away. Later, after the tide is three quarters in there is not trace of the thermal feature and late-arriving fellow tourists wander around the beach wondering what the fuss is all about.

We head back to the camps site and pick-up ‘fush and chups’ for our supper before turning in for the night.

The next day, after a less than fantastic night sleep as the air bed inevitably deflated and some strange Kookabura-type birds did not know what time it was, we head to Cathedral Cove which is about half an hour’s walk through native bush.

Cathedral Cove rates highly in beach recommendations that people have made to us. It lives up to its reputation as we find ourselves on a deserted, quite spectacular, beach the main feature of which is a giant limestone (?) archway enabling access between Cathedral Cove and Mare’s Leg Cove. There are also several rock features off-shore from the beach and the sand is beautiful.

We spend an hour messing around in the water, climbing rock features and lazing on the beach before heading back to the camp site.

Sadly our brief visit to the Coromandel is over as we need to head back to Auckland as Ellie has a drama  rehearsal (here drama group is part of a production at Auckland Grammar School).  Our brief visit to a small part (and the most visited part) of the Coromandel has whetted our appetite for the area and we’ll be back.