Can we borrow your shovel?

We are extremely behind on our postings.  James has started to crawl the last three weeks and any spare time I have has been dedicated to either planning our Christmas trip to the South Island (we leave on Friday!) or Christmas presents.  With the little guy commando crawling like a champ, 'spare time' is getting hard to come by.
Back on November 8th we decided to head to a well-known area of the Coromandel Peninsula (where we went camping) that has two attractions: Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach.

Hot Water Beach is located on top of a natural hot spring, right at the edge of the ocean.  It is only accessible for an hour or two on either side of low tide, so with low tide at 2:30 we had to plan accordingly.

First stop was Cathedral Cove, which is a beautiful beach about 15 minutes from Hot Water Beach.  It takes about 30 minutes to hike to the cove, so we thought we were right on schedule when we arrived, only to find the parking lot for it was dinky and...full.  Lance dropped us off and went to park the car further away.  Unfortunately the parking lot is at the top of a very long hill.  He had to run uphill for 1.7 kms (1ish miles) to get back to us. Poor guy.  On the plus side, I had plenty of time to suncreen and hydrate James!

The hike to the cove provided plenty of beautiful views of both the ocean and its plentiful islands, but also the rolling green farmland inland.

Thirty minutes later we were at Cathedral Cove.  What a fun place to spend a day relaxing and soaking up some sun!  The sand is lovely and soft, the water is sparkling and blue, and the big archway that gives the beach its name makes you feel lucky to live on Earth.  Nice job, God.

Just after this picture James took a wave full on in the face.  Great job, Dad.

He was not amused.

Our time there was too short, but we needed to allow time too get to Hot Water Beach, otherwise we were going to miss out on the low tide.  About an hour at the cove, hike back (including a long jog downhill for Lance), and we were heading to the beach.  Now, I had read ahead of time to bring a shovel to dig your own pool.  Having left all of our digging utensils state-side, we thought we could get away with our hands.  We were wrong.  The sand filled back in faster than we could dig.  And by 'we' I mean Lance.  Someone had to hold James!  Just trying to find an empty area to dig was cutthroat.  We walked up at the same time as another family and both stepped into a recently vacated, pre-dug pool.  Apparently I didn't sit down quickly enough, because I blinked and it was full.  We wandered around, dipping our feet in cold pools.  We found a lukewarm one, borrowed a shovel from a family in a pool that was steaming, and got to it.  The more we, ummm, Lance, dug, the colder it got.  Not wanting to look aimless, we sat in the cold water.  James was starting to look a little chilly when the family who lent us the shovel told us they were leaving and we could have their pool.  Score!  Ahhh, nice and warm.

James enjoyed splashing in the water.  The perfect kiddy pool.

 

As the ocean crept into our lovely pool, we packed up and headed home.  Later that week we were talking with our friend, Ashley, who moved out here the same day we did.  We told her about Hot Water Beach and she said her Kiwi boyfriend was complaining about all the tourists that don't bring shovels.  Such a pain.  "Oh yeah, can you believe those people..."  Oops.