Hey Guys, so today starts the first part of my North Island tour! Now I’m not gonna be doing the whole north island because I am going to be heading east and then back to Auckland.

So we left Auckland bright and early to head east to Hahei in the Coromandel Peninsula. Again, I am traveling with Stray, encase you haven’t already noticed the pattern. It’s because I bought a Stray Everywhere bus pass, which is their largest and most expensive pass you can get. It cost me about $1150 NZD or about $875 CAN.

HOWEVER, this pass is valid for a whole year, and I can use it as many times as I like! ( apparently some guy did the circuit 4 time!) The pass covers just about everything exciting  or worth visiting in New Zealand. How it works is as a hop on hop on whenever you like, so if you really enjoy a spot you can hope off and spend some extra time. There are 2 other hop on hop off bus companies in New Zealand, Kiwi Experience and Magic, I just happened to go with Stray.

Anyways, so our first stop was at this place called Hot Water Beach. Where when the tide is out you dig into the sand where their is a natural spring that runs out into the ocean and thus create yourself a pool of hot water.

Unfortunately for us we fail at achieving a decent hole to make our own pool so we just commandeered someone else’s pre-made pool.  Don’t you just love that word, Pirates of the Caribbean FTW!

After our hot pool stop we headed to Hahei and took a stop off at Cathedral Cove.

You have to hike in about 40 minutes to get to Cathedral Cove, however  it can easily be done in sandals and there is only one really tough stair part.

One really cool thing one of my fellow travelers pointed out was that this beach was apparently in the Narnia film, Prince Caspian. I guess I’ll have to do some double checking!

Hehe this is the best photo of the day, there was this rock in the water that remained me of the Little Mermaid, so I thought I would take a photo!

So to end of the day we actually had a huge BBQ where we cooked up burgers, steaks, sausages, made 3 different types of potatoes, and then this huge fruit salad which literally contained every single fruit you could possibly think of! I thought it was pretty great start to my trip .