Cathedral Cove

So one good thing about not having internet and therefore being unable to update the blog with my travels of the North Island was that I finally got caught up on my actual journal. It's definitely a good thing too because I never would have remembered all the amazing things we saw and did without it and the pictures I took. We began our road trip on Feb 9th, with a sedan (soon to be called The Mazda) and a giant janky van (which was the car I road in). Our plan was to leave for Coromandel Peninsula in the morning and do both Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach in that day. Of course plans change, and we didn't leave till much later.

The drive to Cathedral Cove was beautiful and we were finally beginning to realize that we were in fact in New Zealand. Auckland had been great but it was a city and didn't compare to the amazing green hills filled with giant trees and fern forests that we saw on the road. We arrive at Cathedral Cove and then spend the next 45 minutes finding a way to fix the window. On the way to the cove, the driver window regulator (the thing that makes the window go up and down) broke and the window fell down into the door. Thank god our driver Cody, was a mechanic and very non-chalantly began to rip the door panel off, pull out the regulator and demand we find sticks to hold the window up. This began a search for what ridiculous items can we stick into the door to hold this window up. The end result was sticks, a rubber sandal, McDonalds cup, a newspaper crumpled up and a block of concrete...and some travel brochures jammed at the top for friction.

This meant that it was fairly late as we actually started down to the beach front. Cayla and I were so excited that we ran almost all the way down to the water, only stopping to take pictures and when the flip flopping sound of my sandals got out of control. As we hit the stairs heading down to the beach we looked up and saw a giant rock in the middle of the water and a smaller island farther out. To our right was 3 caves and a waterfall and to the left, a giant hole in the limestone where the water had made a tunnel to another beach. We screamed "WE'RE IN NEW ZEALAND!" as we spun around on the beach, ran like crazy people, and immediately went into the water. I think we scared the couple on the beach, but we really didn't care. It was the first time I had felt like I was truly in New Zealand.

The rest of the group finally made it down and we all explored the beach. Sarah was halfway up a cliffside and we checked out one of the caves. The other half was jumping of the island and some of us were heading through the hole in the rock to the other beach. It turned out that this was the same location for Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian when the Pevensies first arrive in Narnia again. It definitely felt like a different world. We decided to head back up to the car as the sun fell and attempted to find a campground. We ended up at the parking lot for hot water beach, our location for the next day and slept in the car. Cayla and I were definitely thankful for the Tylenol PM or we would never have fallen asleep. I've decided it was quite possibly one of the most uncomfortable nights of sleeping ever and after that, refused to sleep in the car.