Glow worms and hot water beach
Trip Start
Jan 23, 2012
1
38
49
Trip End
Jun 09, 2012
Waitomo Caves, North Island, New Zealand
Monday, May 7, 2012
The next day we were up early and started our trip on the Kiwi Experience big green bus. We met our driver Steve and headed out of the city to head to Cathedral Cove. Cathedral Cove is a beautiful beach with a natural huge archway made famous as it was used in the Chronicles of Narina film Prince of Caspian. From here we drove on to a campsite with dorm rooms for BBQ at hot water beach. At the BBQ we got the chance to meet the others on the bus - all mostly around the 18-20 age range - and at 11.30pm we headed down to the beach.
As you can probably guess from the name, Hot Water Beach sits on a very thin part of the eath's crust (roughly 2km deep), meaning water underground becomes heated by the earth's core. At low tide, you can then dig down approximately 10cm, and after a few seconds, boiling hot water starts seeping through the sand...awesome! So at 11.30, we all headed down, dug away, and paddled in the searing hot water!
The following day we headed to Waitomo - where the vast majority of the bus took part in various activities such as black water rafting, underground tubing and potholing. To save on money, however, we decided against doing any activities and chilled for most of the evening. We got chatting to an American, who's lived in New Zealand for 6 years, and since gaining New Zealand citizenship, works at a school in Auckland. For the best part of two hours, Soph and I chatted with him about everything from the weather, to politics, to New Zealand (and more) over several glasses of goon!
