Hahei Beach

It's pronounced "Ha" like laughing, "Hay" like stuff that grows in a Kansas field that we feed to cattle.   Hahei is a small community of beach homes (and a really nice Holiday Park, which we call in the US, and RV park) on a one mile long beach, with some spectacular rock formations along its shore.   It is part of Mercury Bay on the east side of the Coromandel peninsula.   It was the landing spot for Captain Cook, who was the first Englishman to discover New Zealand.   He navigated here with the help of Tahitian guides using the planet Mercury to determine his Latitude and Longitude.   This was in the middle 1600's mind you.   The original determination for the Lat and Long was later determined to be within 1 kilometer accurate.   Pretty amazing.  Today we can hardly go to the grocery store without our GPS.

We are perched in our camper van right above the beach.   I can hear the waves crashing ashore right now as we approach high tide.   It is 6:30 pm pm Thursday, (12:30 am Thursday am for all of you), and we are enjoying a beautiful evening, temperatures in the mid 70's, and beautiful clear skies.   This has been a nice day, even with the frustrations with trying to get used to this small camper, and things that don't work.   I have to sit outside and keep my vision on the surroundings to remind myself how lucky we are, and how beautiful this place is, and forget that we are living in a "little house" on wheels.   This is not for everybody, and we have those creeping thoughts that maybe a rental car and Air B&B's would be a much easier way to see this country.   But we will persevere.?

Does anyone have tears in your eyes yet for our dilemma?

A Blow hole in the rocks where the top is 7 stories up from the ocean.   We entered through a small hole in the rocks, which then opened up to this blow hole 100 ft in diameter at the top.

Cathedral Rock along the beach, aptly named by Capt. Cook.

We took a boat ride this morning that took us along the coastline surround Hahei beach.   Hahei Explorer runs a 14 ft. zodiac, with Tom as our guide for the morning.   He does this 6 times a day, but we got him fresh, and were the only people that showed up for his first tour at 9:00 am.   It was a beautiful ride, and he was really kind to answer all of our questions that we kept firing at him.   It was like our own personal tour guide, so we peppered him with lots of stuff that I am sure was not in his normal repertoire.   I think he was glad when we got off the boat.  

             Sail Rock.   You think the waves are strong on this coastline?  A large fault line lies just below these rocks,  where the forces pushed up these rocks at a 45 degree angle, then eroded away over millions of years.  

After our boat tour this morning, we took an afternoon hike to a high bluff on the south side of Hahei Beach.   We needed the exercise, and it was a pretty view.   Now we are back at the campground, Shelley is cooking, and of course it is time to sample the Pinot Noir's of New Zealand.   I have been impressed that Shelley is fitting into this lifestyle of a small camper, using the campground facilities for showers etc.   Again, it is hard to say we are roughing it, but you do have to get used to the camper facilities with a 100 of your new best friends, whom all seem to be from Germany.   Nice people, and we have been surprised with how many brought their small children, some even babies less than 1 year old, all the way from Europe to camp across NZ.   Impressive.  Alex and Monica are camped 10 ft. away.   They are from Frankfurt, in their early 30's and have their little baby girl Sophie with them who was born one day later than Oscar, July 5th, 2016.   Cute.  

We have a WiFi hot spot in our camper so we have been able to keep track of KU basketball.   The first game against UC Davis is at 5:50 Friday for you, which is 11:50 am Saturday for us.   So we will try to be at our next spot by noon Saturday, so we can maybe follow the game.   Isn't technology a wonderful thing?   We'll see.  Rock Chalk.