Cathedral Cove & Hot Water Beach

Cathedral Cove is one of the most photographed spots in NZ and therefore can get very busy. It’s also best to go at a lower tide so you can go through the cove without getting wet. This is another spot that you can’t drive to but must hike or take a boat to reach.

Low tide was at about 10am so we got up early in hopes of seeing the cove with as few people as possible. We started hiking from Britzy’s parking spot, in a nice campground, at about 6:45am. The hike was a good 2 miles of ups & downs on a well maintained trail.

We arrived at Cathedral Cove with no one else in sight. It was beautiful!

After about 25 minutes some other hikers started to show-up and we knew the boat tours would be coming soon so we headed back to Britzy.

After breakfast we rented a shovel from the campground and headed for Hot Water Beach. Here you can dig in the sand within two hours of low tide, make a hole or “sand hot tub” and watch it fill with hot water. Sometimes, very hot water! That is, if you can find the space to dig a hole, not cave-in someone else’s sand tub, (oops-sorry!), and not burn your feet in the process.

I chose a spot, dug like crazy, jumped in with both feet and almost parboiled them.

As you can see, we were far from being the early soakers. Some already water-logged soft boiled people offered to share their large sand-tub and we gratefully accepted.

People would come and go, kids splashing, running and playing through the tubs. It was fun! We met people young and old and enjoyed talking with them all. But as the tide rose, we all new our communal hot tubing was coming to a end. The sand tubs and sand castles were soon washed away with the tide.

We didn’t realize but this was actually the start of NZ’s first long weekend of early summer, it was Kiwi Labour Day weekend. The campground went from a few campers to packed-out crazy busy.