Honeymooning around the world: Coromandel peninsula & Bay of Plenty: Caves, nature, pigs, waterfalls, glow worms and mountains

So, now the time had come to start our road trip in New Zealand. We packed our car and started to drive to Hot Water Beach. We took a bit longer and slower route on the coast. We saw few really nice places and views and said hello to a bunch of cows. The roads were narrow and like serpentine. Our first stop was in a small town, Thames, where we had a small lunch and coffee. Markus wanted to drive on the 309 Road that he found on the first time he was in NZ. The road is (or was) a dirt road with no houses or anything else, except a nice waterfall. Now it was partly concealed and there had popped up hotels, parks and some homes. We found also a strange pig farm. 😂 The pigs were walking freely also on the road. 😆 We stopped to say hello also to them and even petted them a bit.

Our new friends 😊

Just chilling...

Markus tried some local meat pie 😋

We found a nice cafe in Thames

Saw some old cars as well 😂

Piggy, piggy piiigggyyy 😄

We came to the Waiau Waterfall when the previous people left from there so we had the fall to ourselves for the time we were there. The water was cold but we had a swim there and Markus jumped from the fall 😃 When we were leaving, a new group came so we had a perfect timing. A bit of snacks and then we continued our way to Hot Water Beach.

Swimming and jumping at Waiau falls

Next to Hot Water Beach there is also Cathedral Cove, a beautiful formation on the beach. We checked the tide to Hot Water because one can go and enjoy the hot pools only around low tide. One should dig a hole in the sand, but close enough to the sea to get cool water coming to the hot pool. The tide wasn’t on our side so we decided to go to check Cathedral Cove. Well, that didn’t work either, because we came that late and it was a 45-minute walk to the cave. But the views from the parking area were amazing. We walked around, enjoyed the views, had few toasts and went to sleep in our car. At least we had a nice sky full of stars above us when the sleeping wasn’t that joyful… We had checked the whole area for accommodation, but the cheapest were around 35€ / each so the car sounded quite good. And the views in the morning at sunrise were maybe worth the not-so-good sleep.

Funny birds walking with us in the evening

The sunset wasn't that spectacular...

We woke up around 6 am, had a small breakfast (few slices of bread with peanut butter) and started to walk to Cathedral Cove. We had seen few people going there a bit earlier, but not too many. The walk was nice and we saw how the sun started to shine over the hills. When we arrived to the beach those who had went there earlier, started to go back, so there were only few people besides us and it was really nice. We could enjoy the views and sounds of nature and sea without tons of other tourists! :P We took our time there and returned back to the car.

...but the sunrise was really nice!

Cathedral Cove in the morning all to ourselves!

Ps. if you want photos without other tourists, go early in the morning! 😉

Another beach close to Cathedral Cove. We had wanted to go further, but the water started to rise too much...

Then we went to Hot water Beach. We checked again the tides, but no, they hadn’t changed from last night :P We went to see the beach, but we couldn’t go digging in the sand. The water was way too high to get to the hot springs. We decided that we wouldn’t wait for 4 hours for the low tide so we headed to Tauranga and Mt Maunganui. On the way we stopped in a gemstone shop. 😆 Edda wanted to check how it looked there. It was quite interesting and they had a lot of different gemstones from NZ and other places as well.

On the way we saw a sign about fruits so we went there and they sold avocados and oranges. The man said that the avocados are from his yard but oranges are from his neighbor because he had run out of them. The oranges were delicious! There were also glow worm “caves” next to Tauranga so we went to ask if they would have space for that night. They had but with a bit salty price…130 NZD pp, so approx.. 96 € (Jan 2017). We decided to go anyway there in the evening because we wanted to see glow worms somewhere. We went for lunch to a Mexican restaurant and tried to find accommodation for the night, but it was just a try. Didn’t find anything.

Fresh, without insecticides! 😋

Then it was time to climb the “huge” mountain of Mt Maunganui! 😜 It was a nice scenic walk and from the top we could see over the whole town. Many people ran to the top and down. After the walk we found few places at Airbnb. The first didn’t work out because of so short notice time, but from the second we got a room for the night! 😄 We picked up the key, took our stuff to our room and left to the glow worm kayaking. We were around 15 people in the group. First we had a 20 minute bus ride to a campsite next to a river where we had a bit of wine and cheese. We saw also black swans! The kayaks were double so we were in the same kayak with Edda. We paddled for about 15 minutes upstream to a water power plant where we were divided to smaller groups and the guides towed us to a narrow canyon. There we could see quite a lot of glow worms. We stopped and the guide told about the worms for a while. It had been nice to be able to enjoy the view by our self in quiet and in our own pace. We were there maybe for 10-15 minutes before the next group came and we had to go. There was not enough space for the next group to come before we left. We paddled back in the dark for 15 min and it was actually nice to paddle in the dark. When we got back, it was nice to take a hot shower and to be able to sleep in a bed! 😊