Cathedral Cove

January 4^th, 2020

Leaving the campsite around 9 am, I continued north along the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula.  There were two places of interest I wanted to hit, Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach.  I’d heard of Hot Water Beach numerous times, even back in the hostel in Auckland at the start of my trip.  The premise is that you can dig a pit in the sand on the beach and voila, warm or even hot water bubbles up from below due to geothermal activity…sounds fantastic.  Cathedral Cove on the other hand is a picturesque beach however I kept thinking about Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island where big old growth trees still stand their ground.  So I didn’t really prepare for a beach day at Cathedral Cove, just a hike.

The jumping off point for Cathedral Cove was a small settlement called Hahei.  I drove into the little hamlet after passing a massive carpark where you could take a bus to the trailhead but I wanted to check out the place and see if I would luck out and find a close parking spot.  Well I didn’t luck out so I backtracked and took the short bus ride.  The bus driver sounded British and he was super friendly and gave us a short spiel about the trail when we arrived.  He implored that we make sure we had plenty of water and sunscreen.  Okey dokey matey.

The hike was pretty easy with a few hilly bits but it was a paved path so easy walking.  The views of a few coves with sandy beaches, cliffs and topped off with islands nearby were stunning.   The signs said it was 45 minutes to Cathedral Cove but it took me about 30.  Stairs descended down to the beach and then boom…wow, it was an amazing beach.  Lovely sand, a cliff along one side and a big rock wall with a tunnel on the other and forest along the back.  A few islets were just offshore with kids jumping off a flat one and the other was like an inverted pinnacle.

It was busy, but not crazy busy on the beach.  I walked the full length of the main beach then passed through the tunnel to the other side which was equally gorgeous.  There was an even bigger pinnacle, this time the right side up, that was probably 80-100 feet high…very cool.

I hung out on the beach for about 45 minutes and then began my walk back.  On my return journey I took a few detours to a couple other beaches.  One was quite nice, and quite quiet.  In any other place it would be the bomb but Cathedral Cove is something else.  The other one was rocky and it was obvious that this was the snorkelling area as there were some people with their masks and fins leaving the beach and I could see a number of swimmers in the water.

The bus was waiting as I arrived at the entrance and afterwards I drove about 10 kilometres to Hot Water Beach.  That’s when I found out that you need to be there within 2 hours before low tide or 2 hours after…and I was there near high tide.  Oh well, I’ll try in the morning.

Hot Water Beach:

Checking out another freedom camping site a little further north I found it full already at 3 pm so I drove back to a campsite, a paying one, kinda like a holiday camp, that I had sussed out in the morning.  It was a decent place and did the trick for the night.