Little Lolly's Small Adventures: Katikati Naturist Park

Showing posts with label Katikati Naturist Park. Show all posts

Waterfall pool swim and feeding eels

Our route today

We had a nice day today, wild swimming in the natural pool below Owharoa Falls. It was wonderful. Children and adults climbed part the way up the rock-face of the waterfall and dived or jumped in. We didn't though. We ended up swimming behind the waterfall curtain and sitting on a ledge, listening to and seeing the water falling around us. It was magical.

A bit later on we took a drive to Waihi and had a wander over to a viewpoint overlooking the opencast gold mine which has yet to re-open because of rockfalls.

We continued on to Waihi Beach and drove a long the sandspit to Bowentown and had a lovely view of the lagoon and surrounds.

On the way back to Katikati we went to a McDonalds to use the WiFi to check-in our flights online. Unfortunately Paul's check-in failed for some unknown reason so it looks as if he will have to check in when we drop our luggage off. If he can't fly then I won't go on my own!

Back at Katikati Naturist Park we took some old bread crusts to the river to feed eels that swim up the river. We had to wait for about 5 minutes or so after throwing the first few pieces of bread before the eels came, swimming upstream to were we were. It was amazing seeing them.

Afterwards we had a nice soak in hot tubs and a cool swim in the pool.

Sadly we will have to leave this lovely place and head to Auckland tomorrow. We have a flight to catch the day after.

Photographs

Owharoa Falls

Waihi

Katikati Naturist Park

Hot sand beach and the Coromandel Peninsula

Our route today

Today we took a scenic drive in a north easterly direction toward the Coromandel Peninsula and around it, anticlockwise.

We found a hot sand beach along the way and stopped to take a look and experience the phenomenon for ourselves. Initially I didn't want go onto the beach - it was crowded with people and I felt panicky. In the end I'm glad I did go. People were digging out small pools in the sand, using spades or hands, during low tide. The hot spring water then seeped up from the ground into the makeshift pools. Some areas of sand were warm but there were also patches that were very hot and one had to be careful not to burn one's toes.

We were going to cross to Whitianga via a ferry near Cook's Beach but discovered that it was a foot ferry so we had to backtrack to Whenuakite so that we could continue our round trip of the peninsula.

We would have liked to have headed further up north from Te Rerenga to Fletcher Bay and back down to Cormandel but time was not on our side so we cut across the neck over to Cormandel and headed southwards along the coast back to Katikati. During our drive we found parts of the road washed away, the result of last week's storms, and were in the process of being repaired.

It was a nice drive and a nice day.

More Pictures

Hot sand beach

Hot and cold spring rivers, and a naturist campsite

Hot & Cold river/hot spring

Today it was time to leave Rotorua Farm Stay and see where the road took us. We stopped to soak in the Hot and Cold spring rivers on the way. Once again we enjoyed rubbing clay all over ourselves and soaking it off, and relaxing.

From there we headed further north in the direction of Tauranga to Katikati Naturist Park (http://www.katikati-naturist-park.co.nz/) which is a naturist campsite with a few chalets. The campsite is lovely. It has a pool, sauna, 2 hot tubs, mini golf, a pentanque court, a play area for children, a river to swim in, you can feed the eels; barbecue facilities and kitchen amenities, a small shop, etc.

Mini golf at Katikati (photograph off the internet)

After unpacking we had a game of mini golf - Paul won hands down! I have a problem with accuracy... One of more permanent campsite owners has a cat which plonked itself down on the mini golf green to sun itself. We didn't mind it watching our game but we ended up having to play our balls around it - an extra skill we could add to our mini golf skills!

The campsite has WiFi which is great because we can try to plan what we would like to do tomorrow. However, we had a bit of trouble with the internet. Paul went onto his telephone and discovered that there was WiFi and there was a prompt to get a voucher code to get access to the internet. So he went through the motions of getting the code but the code was never sent to his telephone in a text message; and he couldn't log on to get access to his email to see if a code was sent there. We went to reception to find out what the problem was. Apparently you had to physically buy a voucher from reception and use the code. Although the wiFi seemed to be Katikati's own wiFi (even though it was named as such), it wasn't really - they got a special deal from the network for users. Paul wasn't terribly happy because he had naturally paid money for a service that he wasn't getting. Eventually the campsite owner agreed to give Paul a voucher to log into the network. Soon afterwards Paul found that he had also access to the package that he had originally tried to sign up with!

Today's route, more or less.

Oh, a smile a while moment... One chap at the campsite, obviously batting for the other side, brazenly asked him about his penis tip full piercing. Paul didn't bat an eyelid and said it was fine, didn't hurt. Methinks the chap is going to go to Rotorua tomorrow for one!

PHOTOGRAPHS

Hot & Cold