Hot Water Bitch

So, both Mike and Lyn and Tom and Linda, as well as numerous Kiwis said we should see/experience Hot Water Beach. Its on the East side of the Coromandel Peninsula - a somewhat out of the way location. The thing is that there is a thermal (hot spring) beneath the beach, so that under "the right conditions" (this is the fine print) you can dig a pit in the sand, be in your own hot pool on the edge of the beach, and have the cool Pacific wash over you at the same time. Sounds great - we love hot water and spas in general. So we planned a trip.

Now it turns out that it's really hard to get there on public transportation. (Like getting to our house on public transportation. You can theoretically get a bus once a day to T-town if your timing is just right, but then you are still 12 miles away and 2500' lower than where you want to be. Hitchhike or walk are the options....) And so, for Hot Water Beach we decided to rent a car.

We have avoided doing this for almost a month for a couple of reasons, the largest of which is the Kiwis drive on the left hand side of the road. OK, I'm going to say it, they drive on the wrong side of the woad. I mean really. Let's take a planetary vote here. Right side 90%, left side 10%. It's a done deal in my mind. Right is right.

And I've been driving on the right side for about 50 years. No kidding. In Arkansas, back in the last millenium, I took Driver's Ed at 13 and had a license when I was 14. So I've got a lot of very old habits to break to drive on the wrong side of the road. But to get to Hot Water Beach in the time we had left there was no other option. So rent a car we did...

Started out from Rotaroa at about 9am. Had to be at HWB by 11am (low tide) the next day. Not too hard right? It's really just 3 hours or so away. Well... Off we went. CT and I do many things well together. Most things in fact. Actually everything except driving/navigating. But for this trip we declared a truce on our old patterns and set a few ground rules, and off we went. And we did just fine for the first few hours. I was tense, I will admit. This is HARD!

We stopped for lunch in a little town of Katikati which successfully reinvented itself in the 80's when California figured out how to grow Kiwifruit and the local industry collapsed. So they painted all their buildings with murals, built a beautiful walk alongside the local river with haikus engraved on every boulder, and began to thrive as a roadside attraction. Anyway we had a nice riverside picnic in the sun amongst the poetry, stretched our legs, relaxed, went to a local rugby match. Then we got back in the car for the next leg of the jouney to the sleepy beach town whose name sounded something like WTF (well supposedly sleepy now, post season), the nearest town of any size close to HWB. But now its late afternoon, the road gets very twisty and steep, up and down. I mean really twisty. I'm driving and I'M starting to feel car sick. And in minutes we're leading a parade of annoyed drivers because we're going so slow. And the sun is intermittantly in our eyes, and the windshield is smeary, and the road is narrow,and the shoulder is nonexistant, except occasionally, but the first time I pull off to let the parade go by there is a drop off onto the pullout and the car scrapes bottom and now I'm REALLY tense.

But eventually, and in one piece, after pulling off the road multiple times to let the strings of impatient drivers go by, we get to WTF and find the hostel we have picked out. Thank god that piece of highway is behind us. Then we learn that we have arrived for the weekend of the Festival of Speed, an annual event when they put on races for almost every type of internal combustion conveience from lawn mowers to the sea going versions of unlimited hydroplanes, and so the town is packed with those who have come to participate in and/or to enjoy this festival. Which explains the hoards of fast drivers that were piling up behind us like sheep in chute on the way in... And also explains why the hostel is full (first time we have encountered full in almost a month), as is every other hostel, motel, hotel, B and B, and campground within about a 30 km radius. But the lady at the hostel is sympathetic, makes a bunch of calls, and finally locates a room for us. And it is located, of course, back down at the other end of the highway of terror that we have just traversed.

So with tears in our eyes, we set out to get back on the highway. CT is doing a great job of navagating, but what she doesn't know is that the entire center of WTF town has been shut down and closed off the the street dance. It takes about half an hour just to get turned around and out of the crowd, and start back down the highway, now in the dusk turning to dark. With a continuous stream of late and impatient speed freaks coming at us.

AT LAST, we get to where we are going, back near the turn off to HotWaterBeach, back near the place where about 2 hours ago CT suggested that we might want to look for a place to stay but SC snapped "Oh, no, we're going to stay at WTF" and drove on. CT tactfully does not point this out. And there is a place, but it is an entire cottage big enough for 5, costs more than any room we have had in NZ so far, and its cold. No heat. Not no heat on, no heat period. No fireplace, no stove, no nothing. It's a summer beach cottage.

We sleep warm enough because we pile up the covers from all 3 beds, but the next morning we can see our breath as we are trying to make coffee and breakfast. We know the sun will warm the place up in a few hours, but we dont have a few hours because we have to be at HotWaterBeach at low tide. So we pack up and quickly get in the car to warm up, armed with the shovel the lady gave us last night ($10 deposit) to dig our hot pool in the surf. And its starting to rain. But we've come this far, and by god we're going to experience it.

We get there, walk out on to the beach, and find ourselves in the middle of a crowd of a couple hundred tourists all looking bewildered and digging holes in the sand but not finding any hot water. After a lot of confusing discussions, we finally meet a little old man who is local, there with his grandkids, who explains that today (more fine print) the low tide is not low enough to expose the part of the beach where the thermals come up, but if we wade out to about knee deep we will find hot sand under our feet. But not to swim in the surf or even wade out to waist deep because there is a nasty undertow that regularly sucks away unsuspecting touri in exactly this situation.

So we do go out to knee deep, and indeed if you work your feet in there, you cant really stand still for long because the sand is too hot. Hot Water Beach

Fortunately, CT realizes that in about 10 minutes the theoretical window of opportunity for experiencing the wonders of HWB will be over, several hundred curious folks will be leaving, and it would be good to head now to the one cold shower/foot washing station at the parking lot. And sure enough, by the time we are drying our feet, the line to rinse off is very long. But we are outta there.