Kiyomi and Ren's Excellent Adventures: It finally stopped!

Well, we've been out of internet range for a few days, so I'll be posting a few in a row to catch up...

December 19, Hihei

It stopped raining. Obviously, Santa was listening to me. It would seem the whole country has been locked in a nasty bit of weather. Northern parts of the South Island are experiencing flooding, and the talk of the weather has been a pretty consistent topic. However, the next few days there seems to be reprieve and it was really nice to have a non-soggy day.

I actually woke up early so went for a run along Wahei Beach. It really is a beautiful beach - nice flat sandbar, a treasure trove for shells, bisected by fresh water rivers flowing playfully to the ocean. I also think it isn't all that busy, even in the midst of summer given that it's 9 kms long. After my run, I ran into Ryan who was on his way to school (tooling around on his bike with a massive backpack on. He was still complete chatty (I barely got two words in) and rather dissapointed that we wouldn't be back for Christmas, but he assured me if we came back there would be free video games in the kitchen area!

We decided to take advantage of the reprieve by trying a littke hike that started right at the far end of the beach. At that end, there was a great little fresh water stream and somehow had hung an awesome rope swing from a tree. It would have been idealic in better weather. The hike was supposed to be a 30 minute walk to a smaller beach, and for the first 300 meters of so, I thought, wow, this isn't muddy at all (which I would have expected given the weather). Serves me right for opening my big mouth, as about 100 meters after that, the mud started, and it got worse. We squelched our way through as best we could until we got to a section that would have require complete mud immersion to get through. I called it - no way I was going to be battling with two mud encrusted kids when there wasn't easy access to a shower.

So, after the aborted walk, we cleaned off from the ankles down at the beach and headed for the next destination - Hihei. The town itself is fairly small, but it sits near a couple of natural wonders and, of course, has a beach. From the Hihei Beach, you can see the massive rock foremations of Cathedral Cove (more on that after we visit tomorrow), as well as a couple other captivating rock formations off the beach itself.

The kids played at the beach here for two hours, happily big holes in the sand and daring the waves to crash in. When I was out there with them, I was wearing long pants and a fleece. They sat in ocean water in their swimsuits. Go figure...

This evening's adventure was Hot Water Beach. It is an experience. The beach itself is nice enough, but it's drawing card is natural hot springs on the beach. We had read a couple things before arriving - bring a spade (for digging your hot pool in the sand) and don't expect to be alone. The hot water is only accessible a couple hours either side of low-tide, and so, there is inevitably a crowd. When we arrived, we weren't sure what to do until we saw the seething mass a little way down the beach. On closer inspection, people were digging a cluster of holes in the sand. There is stretch of about 100 meters where the naturally occurring phenonmenon takes place, and so you need to join the clusters to be able to get to the hot water. And it is hot! Parts of it are, in fact, too hot to even stand on (64 celsius according to the write-up).

At first, I wasn't really sure what to think of the human gopher maze that seemed to be unfolding and was not too sure this was something I was interested in being a part of. However, we finally wormed our way into a little section (ultimately sharing the hot part we had found with a family beside). There are basically small areas where the sand is hot and it warms the sea water, so you can dig your our little hot tub. Not sure what causes the pools, but it has something to do with carbon dioxide leaking out from under ground, heating the sand, which in turn heats the water. The whole thing had a bit of a carnivalesque atmosphere with people seeking out their little plots, digging sand walls against the occassionally encroaching surf and generally working together to create a warren of hot tubs. Reminded me a little of the main stage at the Winnipeg Folk Festival with a patchwork of humanity all staking ground, relaxing and generally there for a good time. As I said, it was an experience. It is also one of the top 101 things that every Kiwi should do (according to some list that keeps popping up in the tourism literature).

Of note - showering later that night, the skin on my knees was a little sensitive and I noticed large red blotches. Seemed I had burned by knees on the sand while digging our little hot tub!