Coromandel

Next stop was the lovely Coromandel Peninsula. For the first time in this trip, we actually got up in time to see the sun rise. Our main motivation was to catch low tide at Hot Water Beach, where you can dig into the sand and a well of geothermally heated warm water will pool. If you dig deep enough, you can sit in it like a hot tub. I don't have any pictures of that because unfortunately the swells lately have been too high for the heated area to be exposed, even at low tide. The sunrise was gorgeous, though.

And then, with the day so unusually (for us) young, we took a hike to beautiful Cathedral Cove.

From there, around to the west side of the peninsula for an overnight hiking trip to The Pinnacles.

We got up to the hiker's hut just before the skies really opened up and poured mercilessly all night. It was kind of alarming when we woke in the early morning, hearing the wind and the pounding rain and imagining that not only would we have to skip the final climb up to The Pinnacles viewpoint, but that we would have to walk the three hours back down to the car in such rain. But in this case, procrastination paid off, because just as we were finally motivating to get going, the skies cleared and we ended up being able to hike the rest of the way to the top and have a spectacular view.

If you look in the very center of this picture, you can just make out the hut that we stayed in overnight before climbing to the top.