Skip to main content

Day 22: Whitianga

Yesterday when I arrived at my AirBnB, the host recommended I not miss Hahei Beach and Cathedral Cove so that’s what I decided to do this morning before leaving the area and heading south to Whakatane. 

Hahei Beach is also known as hot water beach and at low tide, if you dig a hole in the sand, you can access hot ground water. I did not try this, due to timing and weather, but it is nonetheless a beautiful beach.


From the beach, there is a walking trail which leads to Gemstone Bay, Stingray Bay, and Cathedral Cove. The walkway is paved, but very hilly and has steep stairs up/down to the water level.





It was cloudy when I first set out in the morning, but the sun did come out as time went on. I am very glad I took my host’s advice and did not miss out on these beautiful views.





After hiking back to Hahei beach and my car, I started the long drive to Whakatane.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stavanger, Norway

We arrived in Norway Tuesday night and took a bus from the airport to our hotel. After checking in, we walked across the street to a small grocery store to pick up some snacks to take on our hike the next day. We also needed some dinner, so we found an Italian restaurant that was thankfully still open (it was about 9:15pm and many things were already closed) and ran over there to get a table for 12 - most of the group joined us, though not all. Dinner was excellent and when the restaurant closed at 11 we headed back to our hotel to get some sleep. Wednesday morning we got up early and took a chartered bus to hike up Preikestolen. The hike is about 5 miles round trip and took us 4.5 hours to complete. The terrain is very rocky and the top is almost 2000 feet above sea level so it is a significant climb up/down. There were many beautiful scenes along our way, but unfortunately the top was very foggy and you could not see the fjord below. On our way back down, we got rained on a bit, so b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bergen, Norway

 Friday had us up early to take a ferry ride from Stavanger to Bergen. This was a large ferry - more like a small cruise ship with space for cars below, and people, shops, and cabins above. It took about 5.5 hours to get to Bergen by ferry and we mostly napped and read. When we arrived at our hotel in Bergen, we were very hungry for lunch so we decided just to eat in the hotel’s restaurant since it was quick and easy. After lunch, we took a gondola up to ulriken where we got excellent views of the city and surrounding landscape. After taking in our fill of the views, we headed back down the mountain and strolled through town to do some shopping and get a sense of the local atmosphere. The streets were very busy with people - much more so than in Stavanger. This is partly because of the locations and partly because it was now the weekend. When we were getting hungry again, we met up with 4 other members of our group and the six of us went to an Asian restaurant for some dinner....
Post a Comment
Read more

Copenhagen, Denmark (part 2)

 Sunday began with the much anticipated danish pastry making class. The whole group went together and learned how to make four different pastries. The long twisted sticks have two types of seeds on them (our instructor says if you put seeds on anything, the danish love it and will buy it). The rectangles with the braided top have chocolate in them (these were my favorite). The white granules you see on these and the square danishes are actually sugar crystals, not salt. The square danishes have fresh vanilla cream on top, and then of course we have the round cinnamon rolls.  The class took about 4.5 hours and was a lot of fun. We learned a lot about making pastries, though I’m not sure we’ll be able to replicate them at home. After taking our 24 pastries (minus the three we ate and one we gave away) back to the hotel, mom and I decided to head out on our own for the Cisternerne. The Cisternerne is an art gallery, water reservoir, and urban dripstone cave.  It was original...
Post a Comment
Read more