Cathedral Cove

When we made plans to go to the Coromandel there was one place we wanted to go:  Cathedral Cove.  It is a cool place in that it has been protected from the world.  There is no road that leads to it.  As far as we know (we did not see if you can get a boat to take you in but it is a possibility) the only way in is to walk.  There is a trail that you have to walk.  At times it is pretty strenous and hard. We took some rest stops along the way.  That last part is about 5 minutes of very steep hillside you have to go down and then ends with about 40 steps.  It is not for the faint hearted although we saw kids about 4 or 5 going down and in all different kinds of footwear from flip flops to clogs to hiking boots to tennies. We were glad we had on proper shoes! 

In the movie, Prince Caspian (Narnia) when the four kids first come to Narnia they come out of the underground station and onto the beach at Cathedral Cove and this is the first thing you see.  This is my photo and not one that I took from some Narnia website.

The tide was coming in so it was a bit tricky to get to that beach...in fact I didn't.  Dad did.  

This was Dad coming back after he had been over there.  If you look closely you can see the water line on his shorts.  Almost got his phones!  This is what it looked like right before and immediately after he went through.  Lucky!

This was a very busy beach and there were lots of people on it but there was still room to walk around. There were lots of people swimming in the bay as well and some boats. There was a ledge that people would climb on and then jump off.  If you look carefully at the photo here you will see that the one boy is doing a back flip off of the ledge.  I should have asked him if he wanted me to send him a copy but I did not think of it while I was there. 

Most of the people here were not natives of NZ.  They are by no means sun worshippers and these people were all too tanned and burned to be Kiwis.  

Just a few more pictures.  This is at the other end of the beach from the cathedral.  It was pretty neat to watch the waves coming in and out here.  

This almost looks like a double exposure but it is just one rock formation in from of another. This gives you just a bit of what was going on in the water.  There were several kayaks that came over from the other next door beach and then they went back.  Some bigger boats as well.  

This picture below is either the end of the trail if you are arriving or the beginning if you are leaving the beach.  If you look closely you will see that the roots or the big branches of the big tree have been cut to make room for the staircase.  And yet it lives on.  

This is a beach and area that we would love to visit again.  We learned some things that we will do the next time we come.  What a great day it was.