Cathedral Cove

Yes!  We have landed in New Zealand.  I love it here.  It is green, peaceful, gorgeous, unique, quiet, and calls for adventure.  Our flight landed at 8:00 AM so we had the whole day to enjoy when we landed.  Instead of driving south to Taupo immediately, we decided to drive out to the Coromandel Peninsula since we've never been there before.  Our first stop was breakfast at a great little cafe there at the Hahei Beach Cafe.  We were starving and ordered a great big breakfast complete with cake!  Afterwards we put on our swimming suits and started walking to Cathedral Cove.  It was about a 45 minute walk, which after the hours spent on the airplane felt just perfect.  The forest we walked through, and the views made getting there just as great as being there.  

When we first walked down the steps to the beach I kept looking at the cave thinking that it didn't look quite like I expected it too.  Still pretty, but too dark for excellent pictures.

  As we looked through the cave to the other side it looked a lot more appealing over there, mostly because it was less crowded on that side.  The price we had to pay was wading through the ocean-gasp! We had to get wet!  For those who were a little cold it wasn't a price they were willing to pay and as a result we had the beach mostly to ourselves.  The waves were a little rough and I was a little cold, so I didn't really want to spend much time swimming.  Jeremy doesn't let things like temperature get in his way and wandered out to a rock perched in the bay.  It is surprisingly large and the waves made a really cool noise as they broke against it.  

I sat up on a bleached tree for awhile just enjoying the view.  There are so many cool rocks out there in the bay.  I'd love to be able to spend more time on the coasts of New Zealand to explore all of them.  

So picturesque!  This is what I was expecting.

Back on the other side of the cave (tunnel?) we found a much more crowded beach, but still some things that we worth seeing.  This is Sphinx Rock.  I love how the seagulls are perched out there like they own the place.  They probably do!  

We also found these vines with ground water dripping down them creating a type of fresh water shower.  It was very cold and not worth it to me though.  What a great start to our week!