Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

Hot water beach, located on the eastern coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, has been a frequent stop for us. This visit marks the third time we have gone there and tried our luck at digging for hot water. The first visit, which we didn’t really tell many people about, was a total failure. We came at high tide and were a little upset not to find any hot water. This was our second week in New Zealand, and luckily we’ve learned a lot since then. The second visit was with Shelby and Logan, Taylor’s sister and her Fiancé. This second time, we actually listened to the suggestions to go at low tide, and it worked, imagine that. During that visit, Taylor and I didn’t end up filming anything, we just enjoyed it with Shelby and Logan.

So, this blog post is in regards to our third visit, what will likely be our last to Hot Water Beach in this trip to New Zealand. After the success of our visit with Shelby and Logan, we knew we had to go back before we left the North Island for good. We already had Whitianga and Cathedral Cove planned, which is right down the road, so it just made sense.

Our original plan for this visit was to “surf”* all afternoon on Monday and wait until low tide, 5pm, and go dig ourselves a hot tub to relax in. We wrapped up surfing around 4:00, and the beach was more crowded than we’ve ever seen it (in US standards, it was pretty empty, but in New Zealand standards, it was mobbed). There was at least 50 people in the area where we would have to dig. This meant if we were going to get any hot water, we either had to be very rude, our share someone else’s pool. Neither of us were feeling too social, so we opted to try again another time.

*We weren’t doing much surfing, this ended up being Day 1 of the journey to teach ourselves how to surf. Taylor mostly lounged on her board while I sat around wondering if any waves would actually show up – very few did.

Now, if you’re familiar with tides*, you’ll know that it’s on an almost 12.5 hour cycle. So, if you want, you can do some math to see when the next low tide will be, or you can just look it up like we did (much easier). The next day, Tuesday, was pretty gross weather, so we decided against that. Wednesday, looked like a great day, low tide would be at 6:30am or 7:00pm. Either of these would have worked, but we thought sunrise at Hot Water Beach would be worth getting up early for.

*I am not, but luckily Taylor is. This is mostly because she likes looking for shells and tide pools, which can be very dependent on the tides. Many times we have woken up early to go check out the beach right at low tide or right after high tide.

Wednesday morning rolled around way too early, but we got ourselves moving and made some coffee to take with us. The sand was freezing so the walk to our spot was not fun, but the sunrise was just starting so it was at least pretty. We could see steam coming off the sand where we were headed and there wasn’t a single other person there yet. Hot Water Beach is pretty cool, there’s an actual hot spring under the beach, so hot water seeps up through sand, but again, only really at low tide. When the hot water is coming out, the sand gets very hot, like burn your feet if you stand there too long hot.

A big challenge with hot water beach, is finding the best spot to dig, when it is crowded this is even tougher. Luckily, we were the first there this morning, so not only did we have an awesome sunrise, we also could choose anywhere we wanted. This might sound like an advantage, but we spent what some may say is too long looking for the perfect spot. In one spot, we saw some hot water boiling out of the sand, this was much too hot for our hot tub location. In other spots, the sand was still frigid. Eventually, we found a pool of hot water (maybe 100F) and decided to just make it deeper. The digging was easy, we only have a little baby shovel so each shovel full seemed to stir up and bring in more sand than it actually took out, but eventually it got deeper. After about 10 minutes of digging it was good enough for what we needed. We settled in, drank some coffee, and watched the sunrise in our self-made hot tub on the beach.

The right side of our pool was very hot, too hot really, about 105F, neither of us could sit in that for very long. The left side of the pool was cooler, 90F, so we just mixed it around and switched spots a few times and it worked really well. After a while, I decided it was time to hop in the ocean, Taylor thought I was crazy. It was pretty cold, I thought it was 50F, but after looking it up it was 58F, so I guess I was being a wimp. By this time, there was a few more people there in there own pools also enjoying the sunrise. This was without a doubt the best time we could have done Hot Water Beach, not only did we have it all to ourselves for a while, but we also got to watch the sunrise. We would do this exact same thing if we ever get a chance to come back.