New Zealand - North Island (2)

(Waipoua Kauri Forest - Coromandel - Waitomo)

In Waipoua Forest in the northwest of the North Island, the last majestic - and with Tane Mahuta & Te Matua Ngahere - the largest Kauri trees in New Zealand. It was worth visiting the whole thing. The size of the trees is truly impressive and hard to capture in pictures.
After that, we drove to our next AirBnB in Thames. Here, we experienced New Zealand hospitality and were able to try our first typical New Zealand food. It consists mainly of corn cobs, potatoes, and sausages. However, our main reason for going there was the Coromandel area. Here, we wanted to visit the Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove. The Hot Water Beach is the hottest beach in the world and the most famous in New Zealand, attracting around 700,000 tourists annually. It is such a highlight because you can create your own 'bathtub' with beautiful warm water that flows from below, in the sand. This works due to a thermal spring of volcanic origin, which flows about fifteen meters deep beneath the beach: two underground fissures filter boiling water, which slowly rises to the surface. With a rate of 15 liters per second, the spring warms the sand with seawater. The ideal time to enjoy the Hot Water Beach is within a two-hour interval before or after low tide. During this time, you have to search for the hot spring, and outside of this time, you cannot find it. But even during this time, it is not so easy to find it, and if you're unlucky, you'll dig a deep hole and still only sit in a cold puddle. However, we were lucky and were able to enjoy a warm bathtub feeling in our puddle :-)
Afterwards, we continued to Cathedral Cove. Cathedral Cove is a bay on the Mercury Bay section of the Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island of New Zealand, north of Hahei. There, a naturally formed rock arch immediately made us reach for the camera.
After our detour in Coromandel, we drove to Waitomo. The place is mainly known for its glowworm cave, and that was also the reason for our visit. The cave is known for its population of Arachnocampa luminosa, a glowworm species that occurs exclusively in New Zealand. Unfortunately, taking pictures was not possible here. However, if you google Waitomo Glowworm Caves and look at the pictures and videos, you get a realistic impression of it. It was beautiful to ride through the cave on a boat and see the glowworms shining like thousands of stars above you. I definitely tried to plant this sight in my memory :-)