Day 14 - Sea Kayaking at Cathedral Cove

After a quick hotel breakfast, our group packed up the van and set off out of Auckland for our first proper day of adventuring.

It was quite a long drive this morning to Coromandel, but we spent the time all getting to know each other. What a wonderful group of people it is! I won’t share everyone’s stories but within the group we have eight nationalities, three doctors (I’m not sure one endocrinologist and two gynaecologists are the kinds of doctors one might need in a crisis, but still!), a professional musician who has played for dignitaries including Gorbachev and Clinton, a retired policeman, a couple who got engaged on Fiji last week, and a man who recently lost his wife and is on this trip in her memory as it was on her bucket list.

We made a couple of stops on the way to Coromandel (which was good, as it was very twisty turny and quite bumpy in places - Fitbit gave me 8000 steps for the journey!!), and I even found a geocache within ten metres of where we parked up at one place.

We had a quick stop for lunch, and then headed to Hahei where seven of us decided to sign up for an afternoon of sea-kayaking to Cathedral Cove. I teamed up with Gerard, and we made pretty quick progress with our paddling along the coast (if I do say so myself!).

We stopped at Cathedral Cove for a look around, as well as photos and a hot chocolate, before then heading back along the coast.

It was a LOT of fun - I fear I might be a bit stiff in the morning, mind you, and even whilst typing this I still feel as though I am bobbing up and down on the water!

We met back up with the non-kayakers and headed out for dinner. Whilst my main course was good, I definitely made a good decision to have the salted caramel ice-cream for dessert. It was seriously good.

Our final tour stop for the day was Hot Water Beach. There are two geothermal springs under the beach, meaning that at low tide you can dig a hole on the beach and essentially have a thermal bath. Or, if you don’t want to dig a hole, you can just dig your feet into the sand. We were warned that it can be hot, but it was HOT! It was such a weird experience, but a lot of fun too.

We then headed back to Whitianga (fun fact - in Māori, ‘wh’ is the equivalent to our ‘ph’, so it sounds like ‘Fitianga’) to our hotel. I very much enjoyed having a shower and de-sanding.

Tomorrow promises to be another action packed day with a trip to Hobbiton and a sunset cruise at Raglan.

Comments

  1. Neil Webb15 November 2025 at 23:52

    I am clearly reading these in order, you have now redeemed yourself to your dad in ice cream related moments

    ReplyDelete

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