New Zealand
Coromandel Hot water beaches -
We arrived around 5 a clock at the hot water beaches at the Coromandel coast which was slightly to late cause the tide was not on our side. First what is the hot water beach? The hot water beach is a volcanic beach with dark sand and at certain spots hot water is under the sand. So what you have to do is dig a hole or build your own sandy bathtub to enjoy a nice hot bath ;-)
Manuel and Fabian were extremely enthusiastic. They jumped into their swimming shorts and run off for the beach. Cuss, Frederico and me followed. The correct spot at the beach was easy to find as you could see already quite a few people lying in their homemade bathtubs. The tide was a problem cause the seawater started mixing with the hot water, which made it cold again... so we could enjoy the hot water only for around 15 minutes. Hmm pitty, but still very nice experience.
This night the boys were sooo up for a drink with „the locals“ so they persuaded us that we need to go to the next village and to hit the local bar. I wasn t convinced as I have explained, NZ is not too densely populated and they don t have bars everywhere, like in Europe. Wherever you go, every small village has a least one bar... not so. When we arrived in the so called „town“ we saw 3 houses!!!! Boy, did I laugh!! So back to the hot water beach, I nice glass of wine and off to bed.
The next day after we had hit the beach again we moved on to cove cathedral. Basically it is another beach with a huge rock with a hole in the middle. But you can t imagine, how beautiful these beaches were and how clear the water was! We had a nice walk around and made most of the sun!!! From this amazing beach we moved on to Tauranga, to Mt. Manganui. There you had simply an amazing view with a walk of 30 minutes. At the top Manuel met an Argentinian girl who worked in New Zealand as a Kiwi picker/packer. She invited us over for the night. Before we went there we found a BBQ place. LOVELY... first BBQ in New Zealand. Of course this is a men-thing, so the boys prepared the meat and the girls the salad ;-)
After that we grabbed two bottles of wine and went to the house of the Argentinian girl. It turned out to be Spanish evening which was fine for all of us except of course Fabian, as he doesn t speak Spanish. Well he made the most of it and declared it to be a very intensive Spanish lesson for him :-) We were too lazy to repark the caravan, so we slept next to a highspeed road at a parking space... nobody complained!!!
The next day we moved on to Rotorua, the capital of volcanic action ;-). It all sounded incredible, hot springs wherever you go. In the middel of the city in a part thermal action. Thermal to us sounded = spa = relaxing in a natural pool! But no!!!! These termal springs are to hot to swim in! The whole town is basically full of hot boiling water containing a lot of sulphor. Those of you who paid attention in chemistry remember that sulphor smells terrible... basically like a fart! So as the whole town was full of sulphor and thermal springs, the whole town smells like a big fart!!!!! Maybe interesting to visit but definitely not worth living in!!!!
But the views were really nice. As you maybe know New Zealand is the scenery were Lord of the Ring was made. Especially in Rotorua you felt like you were right in the middle of Mordor!!! Scary and steemy with disgusting smell!
Traveling in a campervan can be very nice but it is not easy either. It is especially demanding from a social point of view. We urgently needed some company ... the next place we were going to was Lake Taupo... we really had to go out there. For now we just went to a bar, which was almost empty again. New Zealand is just not a great place to party I guess, especially in the winter season.
So enough for today.
Kisses from Rotorua, the smelly place
Astrid
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