The Town of Whitianga

The town of Whitianga provided enough stories and sights to provide a couple solid weeks of blogs, but I’ll give you the highlights.

#1 Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach Circuit

It seems these two sights are done in the same day, considering we saw all the same people enjoying their days in both locations.

Cathedral Cove is a tiny sand beach where we found ourselves falling asleep in the sun, body surfing and trying not to let the waves make us wear our birthday suits, and watching some serious people TV. It doesn’t get any better than watching kids deal with sand in their swimwear and parents building sand castles long after their children have stopped.

From the Cove we headed to Hot Water Beach, highlight #2. A place where, at low tide, people can dig holes in the sand where water heated from magma rises to the surface. This is the truth. Both times we went the waves were too large to give us the room to dig our personal pools without being flooded every couple of minutes. There was a certain dance people did to locate God’s natural hot tub. We would stick our feet into the sand and do a sort of twist with the body until the feet were deeper into the sand. So, imagine a crowd of about 100 doing this dance. It kept us laughing.

We did, however, find the hot water it burned our feet many times. Our feet would be resting happily on top of a warm spot when all of a sudden they’d sink a bit lower and you’d hit the boiling water and jump from where you stood. Another funny scene to watch. All in all, the days were full of activity and provided us with good night sleeps.