Hobbiton and Cathedral Cove
And then it was the final day of our epic New Zealand Road trip. It was a bit of a last minute decision to book the Hobbiton tour, but I have no regrets since I really enjoyed it. We woke up in Rotorua and drove about 1 hour to Hobbiton, near Matamata, for a morning tour.
Hobbiton is well set up for lots of people and were running tours about every 10 minutes the day we were there. There’s also a cute little cafe if you need something to do for a few minutes before your tour. When it was time for our tour, we got on a bus and drove into Hobbiton.
The tour lasts about two hours and we walked up down and around, past all the hobbit holes and beautiful gardens ending at the party field and Green Dragon for a drink.
Our next (final stop), was the Coromandel Peninsula. It was about a 3 hour drive of more windy roads up the east coast of the North Island to Hahei. Hahei is the site of Cathedral Cove, a popular stop on the Coromandel. It’s so popular, the original carpark is closed and a newer massive park and ride carpark is open about 2 kilometers away. There is a regular shuttle bus that goes from the carpark to the viewing deck.
From the bus drop off, it’s about a 1.5 km walk to Cathedral Cove. There were lots of people coming back as we were walking in and then as we got closer, we could hear the waves crashing. The tide was nearly high and there was not a lot of accessible beach, but it was a pretty stunning beach with the rock cathedral and pounding waves. It wasn’t exactly a swimming beach because of the strong waves, but people were definitely in beach-mode. And with the waves, it was hard to get into the rock cathedral, but we got pretty close.
Instead of the taking the bus back, we walked all the back to the parking lot, on the way we found a place to eat dinner, which worked out well since we didn’t have a lot of food left and there also were not a lot of restaurants in the area. After making a dinner booking, we went over to our campground Hot Water Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, which was another massive holiday park with options ranging from campervan parking to cabins.
We ended on a high note with dinner at The Church Bistro. I was ready for something more interesting after eating a fair amount of soup while we were road ripping in the campervan and The Church Bistro delivered with octopus in saffron hummus and Indian spiced beef cheeks.
And then it was time to find out what Hot Water Beach really meant. At low tide, you can theoretically dig a hole in the sand and it will fill with hot water and then you have a personal hot tub. On the night we were there, not so much. The hot tub effect only happens at low tide, the low tide was quite late and it was getting dark and it also was not a very low tide. So on that night, it was a group of people, in the dark, crowded around the area where the hot water is found and frantically digging holes when the wave was out. We got as far as digging our feet into the sand and feeling hot sand.
