New Zealand, Day #2 - Cathedral Cove, Whitianga, Hahei, Boom Sailing

Monday, February 19, 2018:

We headed out to Coromandel area for the day. It started as a cloudy day and we were obviously worried that we weren't going to see the sun for our boom sailing!

They were standing in front of the sign when I was trying to take a picture so I did the same to Tarun.

We stopped at this cute little cafe for some coffee. Man does New Zealand take their coffee seriously. Any where you go they have the full, barista machine. While I do enjoy just plain drip coffee, I do also love me a good latte or flat white. My boyfriend on the other hand likes just a plain cup of coffee with cream and sugar. It took him almost the full two weeks we were there to learn how to order something he likes, haha. (If you're interested it's a long black with hot water and cream.)

Obviously I had to take a picture of the kitty cat that called the cafe home. She tried pouncing on a pigeon in front of us and the barista that brought us our coffee said, "it's not socially acceptable to eat birds in front of our customers."

After coffee we continued on our way to Hahei to see Cathedral cove. It was a 45 minute hike to the beach there and it was a lovely little beach.

One of my favorite things about new places is seeing the flowers. I must get my love of flowers from my mama :)

My man <3

A friend of mine is living in NZ for a few years so I popped by her work in Hahei for a few minutes to give her a hug and see her beautiful face.

After lunch we went boom sailing!! Catamarans are a lovely way to spend an afternoon on the ocean. They took us to Cathedral Cove, stopped for snorkeling with fish, fed us drinks and snacks, and made sure we all had a good time. Here is their website if you're looking to book. We all thought they were very professional and would recommend this cruise to anyone.

They threw chum in the water to call up the fish. These red snappers were incredible but I couldn't snap a good picture of them.

The boys don't know how to swim so the captain tied a rope across for them to hold onto and float in the water.

Me struggling as I'm trying not to freak out about creatures in the water and getting salt water in my eyes and mouth.

It was cloudy and drizzling for the first bit of our boat ride but I prayed to the Sun Gods and ended up being warm and sunny for most of the remainder of the ride. It started clouding up again on our way back to shore but it didn't matter any more since we got our sun on.

Aman needed a nap for the ride home.

There was a map at the Hahei Beach Cafe where we had lunch to mark where you're from.

We saw a lot of these 'fences' all over NZ. The trees were trimmed into walls basically, it was pretty neat.

We got back to Auckland in the early evening and finished off with dinner and packing as we were off to South Island the next morning. Stay tuned!!