Lake Tarawera - Hot Water Beach
7 February 2017
Tarawera Trail…..
Wow so what a day!
I have to say when the alarm clock buzzed at 5:15am I was not impressed! But then the thought of the day's adventure made it very easy to bounce out of bed
Our first stop along the way was the servo where we fueled up the car with gas, ourselves with coffee – (two mocha’s thanks mmmm), custard squares & chicken wraps for lunch (yum!!) and then we were on the road to Rotorua
We got to the carpark at 7.20am – at first we wondered why it was so empty, but then realised not many people are awake at that time in the weekend – especially on a Sunday morning!!
The morning got even better when we wandered over to the start of the trail and saw the sign which said the walk would take us approx. 4hrs and not the 5 – 6 as said on the DOC website – we were pumped! So off we set with a spring in our Jandals - it was a great feeling hitting the track bright and fresh, & spotting the clear still lake through the Ponga Trees along the lake edge was stunning.
We met some great people along the track, and had some amazing views of different part of the lake as we climbed up, down and around it. We just cruised along - we weren’t there to rush as we knew we had the whole day up our sleeve, however it only took us about 3 ½ hrs to get to the mid way point (15kms) which was hot water beach.
This little lake side beach is amazing. You can dig into the sandy bottom of the lake and find hot water to soak in! If you stand in the lake and burrow your feet in you will even find it and boy is it piping hot – you can't stand still in it for long! There is also a campsite along the shore and there were heaps of tents pitched when we arrived, its definitely a popular camping destination – most people will go there by boat and stay the night and spend the day waterskiing and swimming.
After we found a comfortable place to park up we ripped into our lunch and devoured our custard squares – there’s nothing like a decent hike through beautiful bush to make food taste extra good. A little nap in the sun was next on the menu and just before we conked out properly for the rest of the afternoon we managed to get back on our feet to make last 15km trip back to the car. A lovely couple we had meet on the way kindly offered to take us back to the carpark by boat – have to admit it was pretty hard to say no at that point but we were set on completing our mission!
We have found on our bush trekking adventures that the return journey always seems to go so much quicker and this was no exception! We did the return trip in 3 1/2hrs – the same as the way there but boy did it seem like it went so much quicker! The last 5km was a bit tough tho as we kept expecting to see the carpark around the next corner – turned out to be about 10 corners and four flights of dusty stairs later – when we got to the carpark the backpacks were quickly tossed to one side while we lay down on some soft grass with our legs up a gentle slope, then the discussions of cold iceblocks and daydreams of swimming in the ocean began……
Another great mission accomplished!! We highly recommend this track
You will be pleased to know that no Jandals were damaged in the trek – not one pair fell apart! They hung in there and did us so proud!