Hot Water Beach

This weekend, we took a little trip to Hot Water Beach over by Coromandel. It was a much needed break from a crazy week of school!

We stayed really close to the beach in a "batch." We had a spectacular view of the water and shoreline, which was wonderful to eat breakfast while looking at!

There are lots of rocks, and I wish I could have captured how big the waves were. It is considered a dangerous beach....and I soon found out why when I tried boogie boarding and had the best time of my life because the waves took you all the way in so you actually got to ride them. It was awesome. Luckily, we didn't get caught in any rip tides!

Hot Water Beach is known for the hot water underneath the sand from a natural spring. The water is hot because it gets heated up from volcanic rock beneath it. You can only find the hot water 2 hours before and 2 hours after low tide. So while we were waiting for low tide, we decided to do some bush walking......blazing our own trail, mind you.

I've never had so many bug bites. Swimsuit does not equal good hiking attire.

But we did find a rock to jump off of.

I tried to pose by our first attempt at making a pool.

The water was too hot.

So we kept at it and dug another one....closer to the tide so we could mix the hot hot water with the cool ocean water.

We might have used some assistance from our boogie boards.

But, we finished it and it was wonderful!! Nice and warm, while we basked in the mostly cloudy weather.

Can life get any better?