2025 New Zealand - September - Day 02 - Hot Water Beach, Hahei and Whitianga

September 12, 2025 here in New Zealand.  We had a wonderful nights sleep.  I think Denise was in bed by 7 PM and I followed around 8 PM.  We were awake talking around 5:30 AM with few wake ups in between.  But the rain and the wind came in last night and it seemed like it rained all night.  And the weather today, for the most part was, was cloudy with occasional rain showers.  But always…a stiff wind blowing.  In the later afternoon the sun came out and peeked through clouds every now and again.  But having said that…it has been an amazing day.

We got up and went out the door by about 9:15 AM.  We wanted to go over to a little village called Hahei.  There you can get excursions or take a shuttle to a trail head and walk some 40 minutes to a place called Cathedrals Cove.  Unfortunately, the sea was too rough for any sea voyages or kayak adventures.  And it was too rainy to go for a hike to Cathedral Rock and Cove.  So we found what was open, a little cafe, and went in and had a very nice breakfast.  I tried asking questions about the excursions and the hike and like most places, the locals look at you as if they’ve never heard of the places.  Locals don’t go and do wha t their visitors do.  Anyway, the young lady did her best to tell us what we might expect today and it wasn’t much.

After breakfast, we headed to what is called Ferry Landing, a place where you can take about a 2 minutes ferry ride across a channel/bay to get to the largest town in the area named Whitianga.  It was about a 12km ride from Hahei.  There was parking near the ferry and it ran every 10 minutes only stopping between 7:30 PM and 8:30 PM and then running for one more hour between 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM to catch stragglers eating dinner or shopping over in Whititanga.  Whitianga is a cute harbor town.  Lots of nice small businesses.  We walked all around it looking at the shops.  I stopped in two Pharmacies to see if they had distilled water.  They looked at me like I was from Mars.  We then went to the big market name New World Market.  It was a fairly nice grocery store where we loaded up with juice, small amount of milk, a frozen pizza, and a bunch of danishes, scones and other non-healthy things.  The pizza was for lunch and the rest will be for breakfast and treats on the road tomorrow.  We caught the ferry home around noon arriving back at our flat at Hot Water Beach around 12:30 or so.   We fired up the stove, cooked the pizza and just chilled until about 3:30 pm when we headed out for our biggest adventure of the day with our spade….Hot Water Beach.

Hot Water Beach is known for its geothermal springs that sit under the beach that can only be reached at low tide.  So today, at 4:19 PM, it was low tide.  You can go about 2 hours before and 2 hours after to be able to dig big holes in the sand and watch them fill up with quite hot water that is not sea water and has a ton of minerals in it.   It was amazing.  The tough part was that we had to cross a small creek that had swelled and flowed into the ocean.  That was a little tricky and Denise was a bit nervous.  But we made it.  It was about a 100 yard walk to the spot where those two geothermal springs existed.  People were already there having dug holes and things.  So we go in one that had been vacated and dug it out a bit deeper.  But is some places in your dug out hole it was too hot to lay on it.  Nonetheless, it was fun to have your own sandy hot tub by the sea.  So amazing it was.  But…the wind was blowing and the air was quite cold…probably in the high 50’s (f).  However, it felt really good.

We then came home and showered off all the sand on our torsos to prepare to go get some Fish and Chips for dinner.  Which we did.  There is a holiday park near the beach here.  Each night around 5:30 PM a food truck in the holiday park serves a variety of food but mostly focuses on fish and chips.  So that’s what we had for dinner tonight.  It was pretty yummy although they did not have ketchup for the chips.  And they only gave you a little tartare for the fish.  Our BnB has little in it such as spices and all.  So we had the fish and chips straight up.  All good.  I am now getting ready to nestle back into bed to get some rest for another travel day down to Rotorua…which someone told me us today that they call this city the Las Vegas of New Zealand.  Hmmm…can’t wait to see what it is like there.  We will be there 2 nights and go to church there on Sunday.  Good times.

Pictures:

Our fish and chips dinner given to us in brown bags.  It was quite good.

Upon returning from the ferry ride from Whitianga, this crazy bird came hopping up with its crazy long beak.  Pretty cool.

The bay at Whitianga.

Our hot tub on Hot Water Beach.  So amazingly unique and fun…but cold when getting out.

Our ferry boat over to Whitianga.

Digging our hot tub!  You had to dig a lot to get a little down as the sand just kept flowing in or up from the bottom.  It was weird.

Cows everywhere around here.  Lots of them and sheep.

The bag lady with her frozen pizza that was melting in the rain while waiting for the ferry to come back over.

This is the grocery store, New World Market, in Whitianga.

This is the bakery area in the cafe at Hahei.  We chose a couple of things from in there and had them heated up for our breakfast.  It was very good.  Naturally Denise also bought the snickerdoodle bar for later!

Us on Hahei Beach.  Cold and windy it was.

These are some of the flowers outside our flat here at Hot Water Beach.

Denise found a new bike with lots of yellow flowers there.

In Whitianga there were many charity shops which made us feel like we were in England again.

In the cafe at Hahei, I noticed a laundry basket full of napkins that needed to be folded by one of the employees.  You don’t see that in eateries in the states.

Denise waiting for her breakfast to be brought to her in Hahei.