Wednesday, July 25, 2012

More Driving

Saturday, July 21

This morning we were up, earlier than we would have liked, as we had a full day of adventuring ahead of us. However, the warmth of the bed and the gray skies overhead did cause us to pause and debate whether we really wanted to go on another gondola ride. Good news - we did it.


When we got to the top, we went on a "nature" walk - it was unbelievably cold, and we were very unhappy, as seen below.



While the gondola was not the most exciting one we had done, by far, it did lead us to one of the more thrilling adventures of this trip - we got to go down a luge course. Below is the intermediate luge track.


Here are the luges - not quite the same as the ones used in the Olympics, but thats was just fine with us.


We were required to wear helmets. 


Here is me on the luge. Stephen had the camera and no fear of speed, so all the "action" shots are of me, as he was down the track a good minute or two before me every time. 


To get back up the hill to luge again, we had to take a chair lift for ten minutes. The first time, we had no issues. The second time on the chair lift, there was a small SNAFU. The chair lift stopped. For about ten minutes. It was cold, windy, high, and cold. Did we mention cold? Because it was. Finally, it started moving again and the told us if we wanted to go down the track again, to just take the other chair lift back up.


We decided since we had the time, we should do one final luge, especially since we wanted to end on a good note, rather than frustration of being stuck on a chair lift in the cold. In total, we did three runs each, one scenic track and two intermediate tracks. We took the final chair lift back up, only to get stuck one more time, and two chairs away from getting off. This time, we only waited about a minute, but it was still longer than we would have liked.

After reaching the top, we got back into the gondola, returned to ground level, and got on the road by 11am to head to Coromandel, where we were hoping to arrive before the 2:07pm low tide.

The reason we wanted to get there before low tide was because we were heading to Hot Water Beach, a beach on top of some underground hot springs, which means that if you dig a big hole, it will fill with hot water (up to 140F) - basically allowing you to dig your own jacuzzi with beach-front views.

We flew down back roads to get there by 1:45, only to see the sky was very overcast and a cold wind was blowing. Despite all of this, we put on swim suits and made the trek out to the beach where a number of people were already digging. Once we got close, we realized we probably should have brought shovels, like every other person there, since the beach shop was closed for the winter.

Good news, the locals were friendly and willing to loan us their shovels, as well as some much needed advice - including the knowledge that you should dig in the hot sand, not the cold sand. It took us four tries to find said hot sand. Here is Stephen digging hole number one:


It had very cold water, and just kept getting colder the deeper we dug. It was at this point, we asked the locals for some advice. Here are more people digging holes like us:


This is hole number four. You can see how much work I did:


Success! We had hot water coming in on the right and cool water on the left, making it just about perfect in the middle.


Here is our great view of the beach, and our supposedly sturdy wall.


We took lots of time to relax and enjoy the view after the hole was complete.



However, the tide started to come back in - and all it took was one big wave to ruin a jacuzzi.


This happened to us three times before we finally decided, we were good - an hour and a half in a hot water sand hole was enough.

Covered in sand (a complete understatement - we found sand for two days), we did a quick rinse in an ocean-water shower, got dressed, and drove to the bed and breakfast where we were to spend the night. Wish we could show you what it looked like, but currently there appears to be a disconnect between the camera and the computer.

The owners of the B and B greeted us warmly, showed us to our room, had us place our breakfast orders, and let us shower away as much sand as possible. Once we were clean, we headed into the kitchen to capitalize on the wireless so we could check some emails and figure out where we wanted to go for dinner.

Around 7, we hopped in the car, drove downtown, and headed to a Thai restaurant our hosts recommended. After dinner, we headed back to the B and B, curled up under the electric blankets, and headed to bed. Tomorrow we are scheduled for a cruise of Coromandel bay and return to Auckland - our last day of driving.

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