Cathedral Coves - Narnia movie scene

Hahei Beach

We woke up to a sunny morning! Such perfect weather for the famous Cathedral Cove at Coromandel Peninsula. We reach the Cathedral Cove carpark around 9.45am and it is full occupied already! So had to park our van at Hahei beach carpark and walk to the cove which takes extra half an hour to reach Cathedral carpark, then to Cathedal cove will take about 45min. There's a shuttle bus operating from carpark at Hahei town to the CCove carpark, from 9.45am till 5.30pm. Not sure how much they charge though. Anyway the extra half an hour walk is not too exhausting! And the view is really worth it too :)

On our way to Cathedral Cove, very beautiful coastline along the way.. Looking back down at Hahei Beach...

There we are, the Cathedral Cove, filming location for the movie, Narnia. It is so breathtaking!

A huge cliff arch, or 'tunnel' lead us to the cove with a majestic bluff rising from the sea. The colours of the sea is so nice, captured from the arch. Sooo many people here, with all sorts of activities, kayaking, swimming, snorkeling, jumping, sun bathing, boogie boarding, boating etc etc. Though jam packed with people, (well its summer!) we still manage to find a nice spot for our picnic after swimming in the cold sea water. So NICE!

Cathedral Cove, totally one of NZ best beach!

Gemstone Bay

On the same walking track to CCove, we stop by Gemstone Bay on the way back to do some snorkeling since we hired snorkel mask from Seabreeze for free =) it was low tide then, making access into water a bit more difficult as there are many rocks. But still alright to go in, not dangerous. But it was quite windy and the water is murky. Did not have good visibility, just saw few fishes and heaps of sea grass. lol.

We stayed at Seabreeze holiday park at Whenukite again, since we had to return our snorkel gear and boogie board(which we did not use, too exhausting for third water activity...) it must be a really good caravan park since we stayed for two nights! Hehe. They provide free hire of spades (for digging the hot pools at Hot Water beach), boogie boards, snorkel gears and board games. The park is about 9 km from Hot water beach, but it is $7-$10 cheaper than the caravan parks in Hahei and hot water beach + the free things they provide made us stayed two nights!