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Day 41 - Hot Water Beach and Coromandel Town
A bit of a grey start to the day but as we were breakfasting with a fellow guest from Bern in Switzerland the skies began to clear, so inspite of the 35 min journey and some rather derogatory comments we had heard about the place we headed for Hot Water Beach. The beach itself is a long sandy cove with good surf although swimming is restricted to the area patrolled by the life guards as there are strong rip tides. In fact as we arrived there was junior life saving instruction classes going on which was really interesting - new "Baywatch babes in the making, there were actually more girls than guys learning and as attendant life guards too. The thing though that makes this place unique is the two hot springs that run under the beach which are accessible as the tide goes out, and boy are they hot - one gets to 64 deg C and the other 60 deg. You can get your feet burned very easily if you just tread on the wrong bit of sand as this water seeps through to the surface: in fact one guy was cooking mussels in the sand. If you choose your place well though, on the edge of the spring and dig a shallow hole you get a combination of very hot water but just enough cold to make it bearable to sit and hey presto your very own spa, a bit shallow because you can't stand the heat if you go too deep and it tends to only stay at a certain depth of about 6" anyway. We were one of the first to dig our hole so we had the pick of the spots and "gave it away" once we'd had enough to some lads who were digging miles away from the spot without success obviously. The tide was pretty much out by this time and the number of people had increased substantially so we went and had a swim or should I say a jump about in the surf under the watchful eye of the life guards. This surf was so powerful that I had to grab hold of my bikini bottoms each time I jumped after they had been dragged down to my knees a couple of times by the power of the waves!
We'd had enough sun by about 3:30pm so decided to go and visit Coromandel Town. As we were driving back we saw a sign for the town saying "Coromandel via 309" so decided to take this road, oh what a mistake that was. It was fine although bendy, but then all the roads are bendy, for a couple of kilometres but then it changed into a gravel road. We thought that this was just temporary surface as their road works tend to be like this but no, this was the road surface which bent and twisted up and over a mountain pass for 20km. It couldn't have been a more difficult and challenging drive had we been taking part in a forest rally! Finally arrived in Coromandel Town which they try to keep pretty much the same as it was during the gold rush; it certainly has the feel of a frontier town about it so they must be doing something right. We didn't stay long as the sky was looking pretty threatening by this time so headed on back to Whitianga, this time by the main road which as per normal was twisty with loads of hills. This country is not one to visit if you get travel sick on winding hilly roads that's for sure. Leaving tomorrow fairly early as we have around a six hour drive to Russell so goodbye to Whitianga and the Coromandel Peninsular; we've really enjoyed our time here……
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