Days 5 and 6 Making your own beach hot tub

Auckland, New Zeland

Rained all last night, but luckily no rain today. We headed south, skirting Auckland, our final destination is Hot Water Beach. This is unique. We have already been to Boiling River in Yellowstone with Alex and Hannah. There, and the memory is the most profound, in subzero weather, you take all of your clothes off, dress in your swimmers, stumble down to the ice-cold, snow-encrusted river and try to find a small hole with volcanically heated water mixed perfectly with river water to sit without either freezing in the river or losing your skin to said lava-water. But it was fun......

Here, at Hot Water Beach, you dig a hole in the sand with dozens of other people, hoping to find hot water to sit in. After your hole is dug you either find, a) no water, b) too-cold water, c) too-hot water, or d) perfect water. The ideal end result is you sit in a sand-hole with 2-3 inches of hot water....... But, if you are smart you watch a few groups and wait for one of them to leave and ask politely if you can replace them in their hole. Which we did. And have a picture to prove it.

Digging with no luck, water was too hot.

We ended up replacing the people in the hole behind us. Yes, this is fun.......

We ended our day with a nice hike to Cathedral Beach. Time for more fish and chips and bed.

Day 5 is another sunny but cool and breezy day. Our destination is Rotorua. Again, all the town names are Maori, can't spell or pronounce them. Below are gigantic hedgerows we find everywhere. 30-40 feet high. What's behind them? Frequently kiwi and citrus trees. We can only assume that they are protecting the crops during the windy parts of the year.