We worked a double yesterday so we could have today off. We decided to go to hot water beach and try and dig our own spa pool. It was only about 40 minute drive from here, we stopped at the store to pick up some lunch along the way. The beach is lovely, its mostly a white to gold sand and there are lots of small islands in the ocean around the area. There were a lot more people there than I would have expected on a Monday in the off-season. It looked like there were three main points where the hot spots were. It was rather obvious as there were people already there with pools dug out. We walked around the periphery trying to find a good spot along with some other stragglers but we never did find a good place to dig. Grace and I gave up and just sat in the sand a while to try and squat in someone else’s pool when they finished. Our plan finally worked and someone offered us their pool as they were leaving. We took up residence; it wasn’t long till the waves were beating at our wall though… and after about ten minutes our pool was reclaimed by Mother Nature. It was all right we were ready to go.

We made lunch on the trunk of the car, just ham sandwiches and Doritos. Wasn’t bad, but the birds were so brazen they almost would take the sandwich right out of your hand. It was about 1 so we decided to go up to Cathedral cove. It was a 45-minute walk to the cove and it was a pretty nice track. There were a few viewpoints and it was really worth the walk. We meet lots of people on the trail coming out as we were going in, and when we got there it was just the two of us for about 15 minutes, that really made it special. There was a huge arch there that you used to be able to walk under but some rocks fell off it and now it is blocked off. I still went in, was really neat. On the other side of the beach there was a small cave, least I thought it was small till I went in. The tide was coming in so Grace wouldn’t come check it out with me. There was a waterfall and some neat two-story bathrooms that had windows that looked out to the ocean from the toilet. On our way back out we meet probably 30 people on their way down, so glad we went when we did It really would have sucked to have that many people there at one time.

We drove by another beach but the sun had gone behind some clouds and there was a cool breeze so we decided it was time to head back. We were planning on doing a whole another part to the trip today but we didn’t have time, so we are going to do it Wednesday when we leave.

We stopped for ice cream on the way back to the motor camp and then the rest of the night went pretty fast, we watched a kiwi stand up comedian that was pretty good then played a game of settlers. Grace is trying to sleep right now amidst the clicking of the keys, but im just not really that tired right now. Might try and find something to do for a bit.

More later…