Midnight Mud

Back from the Bay of Islands I spend another night in Auckland and then went with a new Kiwi bus eastwards.

The city of Auckland is build on top and between of some dormant volcanos. Climbing one of them (like Mt Eden) gives you a very nice view over the city:

We passed a beautiful coastal area famous for the cathedral coves (see pictures).

However, our main target was the Hot Water Beach near Thames. Hot water raises through the beach sand near the surf. If it is low tide, you can dig a pool and get a natural hot tub at the beach side. We just missed the low tide during the day, so went out at midnight for our next change. Most of us were already quite loaded because of jetlag and our early morning departure. So the pretty cold weather (and sea) did not really affect our ambitions. Even more, a beautiful full moon would shine us the way to the beaches 20min away from our loges. We stood there with our spates and waited, and waited, and waited.

The waves would come in and come out at the same heights, destroying all attempts of digging a whole into the soft sand. We were freezing on the top, but we could burry our feet into the hot sand and that made it actually quite comfortable. A big silly party of drunken Britain's buried in a 3 square sand patch.

At midnight proper (which was supposed to be the center of low tide) the water has backed up maybe half a meter. Was there not something with the full moon and the tide? I am not 100% sure about the scientific background, but our tour guide checked the tides again and realized that today the low/high tide difference is just half a meter (instead of 2m). Thanks bro for telling us so early.

Nevertheless, we gave it a last approach. An American guy and me started digging. The result was a fairly large pool, that slowly filled with water. I dipped my feet in, it was barely warm and basically liquefied sand (actually mud). Having a bath in a semi warm puddle of mud in the cold was not my favorite for tonight. I thus left the reward of our effort to my digging companion and our bus driver who both were heavily engaged with their one-night-fiances :D

 

20.05.2016