My tummy doesn't feel well...

..is really becoming a mantra here in New Zealand, windy roads that traverse the hilly coastline tend to bring this mantra out in both our kids now. It seems that the prairie stomach was not designed for sloshing about in the backseat. The haripin turns barely wide enough for a car, let alone a camper tend to bring the quesy out in me as well. The locals fly around these corners at speeds that tend to defy physics. I don't know how they keep their cars, and their lunch, both where they belong. We average about 1 stop every half hour during the worst of the serpentine sections, to quell the rising contents of small tummies. It is a lot easier to pull off the road and get out to walk around a bit, than to clean the inside of the car with a box of tissues. (mental note, perhaps we should stock some cleaning supplies on the car!)

Well enough about that, on to the reason for the queasy stomachs.

This weekend we headed up through the Coromandel forest park to Whitianga. It was about a 2.5 h drive, so we decided to book a cabin for the night because we had been forewarned about the road. Our trip began at about 8:30 Saturday morning, with the first stop being "hot water beach". There is a lava chamber below the beach which is cooling, but still has enough heat to create some very hot ground water. I was standing knee deep in the ocean on a hot spot, which you could tell because even though the water was cool your feet on the sand felt warm. If you dig down a couple of inches you hit some very hot water which caused me to pull my foot out very quickly! The water is way too hot to remain in. The beach was amass with bodies jostling for the best location to dig a hole in the sand and tap into the hot water. The water was then funneled down a series of trenches to mix with the cooler water making it reasonable enough to sit in like a hot tub. There are only 2 locations on the beach that you can tap into the stream of heated ground water, thus this very long beach is empty save for the 2 very crowded spots. We got there at about 11am, so I guess you have to get there pretty early to get the good spots. We managed to tack ourselves onto the end of one of the trenches and the people were nice enough to break the wall on their pool to let some of the hot water into ours. Then we left at about 12:45 for some lunch at a nice cafe recommended by the guide book. From here we headed off to Whitianga about 35 minutes from hot water beach, to check into our cabin. In the "holiday park", There was a playground for the kids with a trampoline, as well as a swimming pool which the kids enjoyed as well. After supper we took a walk down to the marina.

The next morning we got up at 7am to get breakfast made, clean the cabin and be on the road for the trip back to Hahei, which is where the sea kayaking tour was meeting. OMG what a great time this was!! Three hours + of paddling in the ocean with great kayaks equipped with rudders for steering. We paddled along the shore to a marine reserve that encompasses "Cathedral Cove". the shoreline here is composed of ignimbrite produced by volcanic explosions 8 million years ago. The erosion of this rock produces first peninsulas, then caves, then arches, then finally when the arches collapse you are left with isolated stacks.

This location was used in the second Narnia movie.






























Our guide Mike was a great fountain of knowledge and filled the entire tour with information about the area. He grew up in the area not far from Cathedral Cove. He also gave us a great place for lunch, the Purangi Estate winery. It was a lovely rustic little establishment with a great outdoor patio area, and a ping pong table inside that we played on for a time.

Well that was a good trip, even with the queasy stomachs. The kids really enjoyed the kayaking, just not the car ride to and from the area. With all of the traveling we are going to be doing we can hope that the prairie stomachs will toughen up over time.

That's all for now, take care everyone.