Today was a huge day of beaches and traveling. We ate breakfast in the hostel, and hopped on the bus bright and early so we could make it to our first stop, the hot water beach. We arrived at the perfect time- low tide. There were already a bunch of people there digging holes on the beach.
Hot water beach!
There is thermal activity under the beach that causes the ground water under the sand to reach very high temperatures. When I stood in the surf, I could did my toes down into the sand and it was so hot that it almost burned! When we were digging our hot tubs we had to made sure a little bit of seawater could get in too because the water coming up from the ground would have been too hot by itself. It was a little disappointing since there were so many people on the beach and the tide was coming in, so we only had a good spot for a little while. We had to get back on the road anyway, because our next stop was Cathedral Cove.
We arrived at the Cathedral Cove area and Art and Doug told us to be prepared for a long hike. It was about a 45 minute hike up and down hills all along the side of the mountain to finally make it down to Cathedral Cove. We spent most of the afternoon there, which was nothing short of spectacular. There was a short sea stack not far off shore that we spent a lot of time swimming out to and jumping off of.
The beach at Cathedral Cove and the sea stack we jumped off of!
We also explored a sea cave that had a little mini beach inside, and walked through an arch to get to the other side of the cove. We learned about the progression of weathering along a beach- first is a sea cave that weathers to a sea arch, that eventually becomes a sea stack. Cathedral cove had great examples of all three. It also had what is called "honeycomb weathering" where bits of sediment blown by the wind wear away rock to form a honeycomb pattern in the rock. It is a good thing we had a lot of time there because we learned a lot but still had time to goof around and have fun!
Me, Christine, and Erika in front of a sea stack on the other side of the cove
Us gals posing inside one of the smaller sea caves
Me, Erika, and Christine standing on a rock in front of a large sea cave
We got to swim and play for awhile but we still had one more beach to log, so we hiked the 45 minutes back up out of the cove. We got back on the bus and headed back to Whitianga to do a beach profile of Buffalo Beach, the beach right outside our hostel. We did a contest to see which group could collect the most different species of shells. My group ended up with a lot of shells, but we only came in second place. I found a bunch of really interesting and unique shells that aren't found in the states including pipi shells.
By the time we finished at Buffalo Beach, we only had a little bit of time before heading back into town for dinner. We ate dinner at a really good thai restaurant, then headed back to the hostel. I felt a little bit of a cold coming on, so I took some airborne and headed to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment