In Hot Water

The Coromandel Peninsula extends upwards from the hook of land to the South East of Auckland. Some fifteen miles across and some forty miles high, its bulk is covered with the Coromandel Ranges, themselves layered with the Coromandel Forest Park, an undulating mass of rolling hills, made vivid green by the densely growing pines and ferns, and only interrupted by impressively jagged mountains lurching out from beneath the canopy.
Around the edges of the peninsula, the coastline is crinkle-cut and frayed into dozens of islands and off-shore rocks and formations, and it is here, near the coast where we are to spend the weekend in a small holiday cottage.
It is with some relief that I do not hear from any of my agencies on the Friday morning, begging me to come back to work for them, as by three o'clock in the afternoon, Gary and I are picked up by one of the three cars, and joining a convoy towards the peninsula. There are fourteen of us in total - a largely international group anchored by a token kiwi - all friends of Gary and Julia's by various degrees of separation. A pleasant crowd, and the house is attractive too. Modern and functional with four bedrooms and various combinations of beds and spare mattresses. There's a large kitchen, a sizable lounge and most importantly of all, a wide wooden deck with a barbecue and a view.
The first night is spent eating and drinking and talking with decreasing coherence as the night goes on and the empty bottles proudly accumulate on the kitchen work-surface. With no neighbors to annoy.
"A group of people go to stay in a holiday cottage in the middle of nowhere," someone says, "Isn't that the plot of every horror movie made since 1980 or so? We're all going to get picked off one-by-one by some axe-wielding maniac!"
As it happens, no maniacs - axe-wielding or otherwise - materialise, and our only unexpected guest is a small dog who takes a questionable fancy to someone's leg. The evening extends cheerfully and noisily into the morning, and one-by-one, we bow out and stumble back to our respective sleeping corners to recharge for the following day.
But Saturday is not exactly a day of strenuous activity. There is admittedly a forty-five minute walk to navigate in order to reach the beach at Cathedral Cove, but it is hardly strenuous and the destination is the sort of place which invites relaxation by its very appearance.
The name itself is evocative of course, even if there are so many places upon which the term 'Cathedral' has been slapped as a prefix to highlight a location's grandeur rather than its ecclesiastical trappings. I wonder how many of these places (Coves, caves, canyons, caverns...) are named more for the alliteration rather than anything else - this one certainly does not look like a cathedral, but it does inspire a certain kind of awe.
"More scenery like this," I hear someone murmur, "And you'll make a believer out of me yet."
The route here, winding its way along the headland affords breathtaking views out over the sea, from which rise a variety of assorted islands, lurking from the depths like petrified sea monsters. Even these are covered in greenery, softening the rocky outcrops and taming their saw-tooth outlines.
The islands extend far across the horizon on all sides, fading hazily into the distance made misty with the sunlight on the sea-spray.
Further up North, is an area named The Bay of Islands, but The Coromandel Peninsula could easily be described as the same if it had got to the patents office first - it is ravishingly, eye-bleedingly beautiful. But the beauty is not confined to the offshore portions of the cove. The beach itself is split in two by a vast limestone arch, and the cliffs looming high around it glow in the morning sunlight.
The sun is glorious and warm - it is easily the hottest day since my arrival in New Zealand, and the ideal weather for a beach visit, perhaps it is even the ideal beach as well.
On the way back to the cottage, we stop off at a nearby supermarket (which involves a ferry crossing to reach which may or may not make it an excursion worth mentioning here) to replenish the supplies for the barbecue, and once back at the house, we settle in again for the evening and the wine comes out once more. There are drinking games that evening - the sort in which additional rules are decided on the fly, and so by the end of one particular session, a drink could not be consumed without the participant clapping their hands, getting to their feet, turning around three-hundred-and-sixty degrees before sitting down again and singing the opening lines of "Happy Birthday To You". Ironic perhaps that a game intended primarily to get people drunk should make the act of drinking such a trial.
The evening continues with further silly games which became complicated by further silly rules. I suspect it would be rude of me to document these any further though for Gary's sake, although perhaps someone less charitable might see fit to make a comment on the subject with additional details.

The evening does not quite end there, indeed as the post-barbecue events seem about to wind down, a further excursion is proposed. A nocturnal visit to the nearby Hot Water Beach.
Hot Water Beach is one of those locations, whose primary appeal is exactly what you would expect from the rather unimaginative name foisted upon it. It is a beach beneath which are a pair of hot springs, and so when the tide is out, it is possible to dig into the sand and prepare a personal spa pool while the tide rushes and roars in the near distance.
At midnight, the tide is just on the turn, and so it is a perfect time to discover this. Although as we reach the part of the beach in question, located at the end of a rocky outcrop pointing out to sea, the water still strikes me as appearing rather high, which leads in turn to the sort of concern which can bring about instant, wide-eyed sobriety:
"The tide is going out, right?" I ask nervously as we pick our way through the ankle-deep water to reach the sands.
I need not have worried of course, the tide is indeed slipping further and further into the glistening darkness beneath the wide, full-moon, and the beach is becoming further and further exposed. Nevertheless, I mentally plan myself an escape route, just in case the tide does something unpredictable and breaks the law of physics just to spite me.
The sea water is blood-freezingly cold above the sand, but walking across it barefoot, it is disconcertingly possible to detect where the warm patches are located beneath the surface, and digging a foot beneath the sand to find that the warm water is a rather peculiar feeling. In fact, the water proves to be more than merely warm, it is hot - very hot indeed.
Six of us make it to the beach, and by the light of the moon set about digging into the sands. A curious endeavour for that time of the morning, I admit, particularly given the amount of alcohol and barbecued food products we had consumed between us. And yet, nestling down into the hole in the sand where the water is half-blisteringly hot and half-numbingly cold, it seems to make a great deal of sense indeed, even if further digging around the edges of the hollow in a half-hearted attempt to modulate the temperature of the environment only succeeds in heating the water further.
A bizarre idea as it most certainly was, the notion of traipsing down to Hot Water Beach at all hours in the morning is not ours alone. In fact, a number of other groups - a curious sight in the moonlight being armed as they are with shovels and spades - appear along the beach and set about digging holes of their own.
I don't know if you can quite picture how all of this ends up looking. A gaggle of bodies stripped to their swimming gear lying in huddles in home-dug sand fortresses, pasty and corpse-like in the grey-blue moonlight, while the diminishing waves lap out in the distance. It could easily resemble some medieval religious painter's vision of hell had the whole thing not been so bizarrely relaxing.

The following day, we find a list of instructions required for cleaning the house and so everyone charitably puts their hangovers to one side and brakes out the bleach and the J-cloths. Our deadline is half-past ten, and by then the house is looking pretty much as it had done when we had first found it. Even the chair-leg which had snapped in two looks as though it had done nothing of the sort, which is handy if rather dishonest. Certainly the woman who comes round to inspect the place - finding us waiting patiently by the cars - seems delighted by the sparkling house.
"I thought I was going to have to do that myself," she marvels, sending us on our way before she has the opportunity to look too closely at the chair.

On our way back to Auckland we make a few stopovers. The first to Hot Water Beach once more, in order to see what it looks like in the daylight. It looks very attractive, a shallow curve of sand following the coast into the distance. The hot-springs are still hot - someone has clearly left the tap running overnight - and have attracted giggling crowds, who find themselves dancing across the scalding sands in surprise. Most industrious of all are what look like a bus-full of elderly people armed with shovels, obsessively (and gleefully) carving up the sand into individual bubbling pools and then planting themselves in them awkwardly and proudly.
Another vision of hell then, it would seem.