Worship at the beach.
Cathedral beach is well promoted on various brochures and web sites about the
Coromandel peninsula and signposted as you travel towards Whitianga.
Does it live up to its hype ? I think so.
The beach has a cathedral like tunnel in an outcrop created by the sea as its
feature. This has made it into a very popular destination for tourists, which
includes us.
We had a very pleasant sunny day and managed to time it so that low tide gave us the opportunity to explore the beach and the other smaller caves. From other accounts of the locals, it is not the end of the world if you arrive mid tide as you can still wade through.
In the summer a shuttle bus ($5 return) is available to take you from Haihi beach car park to the trail head car park. No car parking is available at the top, due to high number of tourists. It is not too big of an ask to walk either, but we elected to cut out the hill and use the bus.
The trail head offers a very pleasant elevated view of the sea and off shore islands.
The track to the beach is paved with bitumen so, though there is a bit of hill work, it can be negotiated by most of the population. Many people were here today, but somehow it did not feel overly crowded; nothing like our experiences in Europe !
As we arrived in the afternoon, we did not have any time to visit the other beach offerings along the way nor the other lookouts, which would have been good for a 2nd day of wanderings. I chose, for some reason not to swim - the water was certainly at a pleasant temperature and life guards were on duty.
The path provides respite from the beating sun by passing through a forest as it drops into valleys.
Then, as you rise up to the hill tops you are presented with wonderful views
of the sea cliffs, ocean scene and off shore islands. No wonder this area is
popular.
The beach has some great rock formations rather like a mini 'twelve
apostles' as offered by Victoria on the Great Ocean road.
I haven't missed that much out really as I took my inflatable
stand up paddle board with me and managed to use it about 4 times in the
canals at Whitianga in the mornings including this one - it was too windy on
the other days. The paddle board (a JP 10'6 light inflatable only 10kg with
paddle) was purchased for my
trip to Exmouth and hasn't been used since, so it was time to realise its cost. Glad I
brought it as the morning paddles were very pleasant.
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