Cathedral cove | Dinchen's WordPress

We hopped of the bus in Hahei and took some time to explore the Coromandel Peninsula, but we had much more time than expected.

Originally we had a different plan: spend two nights in Thames and a few in Hahei, then hop on the bus again. Then our bus driver told us there is not much to see in Thames and advised us to go directly to Hahei. Since we would do a short stop in Thames anyway to buy food for the next days, we agreed on going to Hahei directly. He was right, there was not much to see in Thames and we were pretty excited to see the beautiful east coast of Coromandel…

But just as we arrived in Hahei, we wanted to book our next bus to Raglan four nights later. Suddenly the website had huge problems and we were not able to do anything at all for the next few hours. The next day we tried again, I even phoned the Stray office only to find out that the bus is full. Additionally the next bus, two days later, was full too. This is the reason, why we had to stay eight nights in Hahei, instead of four, because only then we would be able to catch a free bus. Honestly, there are worse places to be stuck at and we had a great time, but eight nights was a long time. We learned to book our bus sooner, especially with the main tourist season coming now.

Our accommodation in the Hahei Holiday Resort was a group of nice cabins and exclusive for people travelling with Stray. The resort was close to the beach and we did some nice group BBQ and bonfire with all the other Stray-passengers there.

The first thing we visited was the Hot Water Beach. On this beach you can dig your own hot pool at low tide. The seismic activity under the sand is heating up the water until it is very hot. Actually the first hole we dug, the water was too hot and we had to do another one. It is an awesome natural phenomenon, which you can even enjoy in the rain.

Hot Water Beach was great, but the number one tourist activity in Hahei is walking or kayaking to Cathedral Cove. It is crowded in tourists everyday, but we were lucky to have the place nearly for ourselves, because we got up very early, watched the sunrise at Hahei beach (6am) and walked directly after the sunrise to the Cathedral Cove, arriving there at 7am. It was just stunning walking in the cove, it is much bigger that it looks like on photos. We relaxed for a while next to the cove and made our way back when it started to rain. At the end of the walk back we were soaked.

We celebrated my birthday at the beautiful Hahei beach with blueberry cake and even went swimming. The beach is really long and has a lot of white sand and small waves. Some of the beaches in the area, including Hot Water Beach, are not really safe for swimming, this one is.

Hahei has a restaurant and a cafe, as well as a small general store and a place for take away food. We did a very nice Beer tasting in the restaurant at my birthday. The beer they served was crafted on the Coromandel Peninsula. In the cafe we had hot chocolate and spicy chai latte on other days.

The time in Hahei was very good, even if we had one or two rainy days. It was a bit hard to let the friends leave we made there and to always integrate into a new group of people.