Friday, 13.03.20, Day 117

Waiponga Reserve, Opoutere

Another adventure begins in the dark as we visit the famous "Cathedral Cove" at sunrise, which is known from the Windows start screen. Unfortunately, we are not alone here even at this early time of day. To still be able to enjoy this beautiful place, we go to the other side of the cave and can experience the Cathedral Cove all by ourselves. To make the return trip a bit more exciting, we play a round of Phase 10 while walking, which surprisingly works quite well. Additionally, Arnd provides a brief moment of fright by hiding behind a fence and scaring Eileen and Nicola to death. Afterwards, we go to a beach and enjoy the sunny afternoon. Here we meet some locals (a Maori tribe) and have a nice conversation. Just through this short conversation, we get a rough insight into their lives. In the late afternoon, we go to Hot Water Beach, a small beach section where you can observe and feel the emergence of 64 degrees hot thermal water by digging. Unfortunately, this also means that about 1000 tourists are present at the limited beach section every day at low tide, which takes away the experience of this special beach for us. On the way to Onewhero, where there is a campsite that we have a lot of connection with (we already spent about 8 days here and spent several nights after the break-in), we stop at the equally famous McDonald's. Afterwards, we are really looking forward to driving to the campsite and feel right at home.