A midnight trip to the beach

So yesterday evening we met up with Sophie, a girl who I met at the University of Portsmouth who has moved back to Auckland after living for 7 years in the UK. She picked us up and drove us out to  Mission Beach. It had just about stopped raining when we got there.

Sophie treated us to Fish and Chips, and a New Zealand drink called L&P, which was like lemonade but better. We sat on the beach chatting and eating the fish and chips, which was really lovely. Then we had a little wander along the promenade, and stopped at a shop to buy an ice cream that's popular here in New Zealand. It's like ice cream topped with jelly, covered in chocolate. Like a more exciting choc ice. It was actually really good.

Afterwards Sophie drove us back to the hostel.  It was a really lovely evening.

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This morning we got up at 7:45 to catch a bus to Hot Water Beach. A tip for going travelling that I learnt today: if you're going to get into the underside of a bus to put your luggage in, don't wear your sunglasses on your head,  because if you do and you bang your head, you may smash the sunglasses you bought two days ago to replace your broken ones.

The drive was quite scenic and our bus driver, Ben, was pretty funny. We got to Hot Water Beach around 1pm and checked in to the little lodge we are staying in. He original plan had been to go and dig holes on the beach to create spa pool type things, as there are lava tunnels (apparently) running under the beach that heats the water, and you can only do this at low tide. But the conditions weren't great and the beach was packed so instead we went to Cathedral Cove. We plan on going to the beach at the next low tide which is 12pm!

We went to Cathedral Cove at 2pm. It was only about a ten minute drive from the lodges we are staying in. It was a hilly walk down to cathedral Cove but it was pretty beautiful when we got there. The path lead down onto one beach and then you could walk through a huge hole in the rock to get to another smaller one. On this beach there was a large limestone rock about a metre into the sea. I thought it looked like someone's face. We had a wander on the beaches, climbed some rocks and took some photos before heading back. The walk was harder on the way back because we had to go up a long flight of stairs that we went down on the way there.

This evening before we go to the beach we will just be chilling at the holiday park we are staying at. The lodges are actually pretty nice. There's 14 of us in one, split into two rooms, with showers and toilets, and a small kitchenette, with a microwave, sink and fridge in the middle of the rooms.

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SO this evening we had dinner around half 6 and then chatted to two girls from Leeds and played cards with them. Pretty sure Lauren was cheating because she kept winning!

 The girls told us that the woman at reception said anytime between 10pm and 2am would be fine for going down to the beach so we all decided to go down then. We told the girls on our rooms and they told the girls in their room so at around 10pm, 10 of us girls all headed down to the beach with our shovels, ready to dig a hole in the sand. It was about a ten minute walk down to the beach and when we arrived there was already people there. Much to our delight there was also a pre-dug hole there.  And the water was indeed hot.  Some patches were too hot to stand in. A Canadian girl was brave enough to be first to sit down in the pool and I followed suit. We were having trouble getting a nice warm big pool and some nice German boys next to us let us extend their pool to connect to ours and Lauren and a few more people got in too.

After a while we decided to head back as we had to get up early in the morning. It was pretty cool to see a beach with hot water, but when we left we were absolutely covered in sand. I've showered and I'm still not convinced I've got it all off. Now we're going to sleep for 6 hours before getting up to get the bus on to the  next place.