Feb 8, 2024: Papamoa Beach (near Tauranga)

I’d tried to book a kayaking trip on the cormandel peninsula last night, but my credit card pooped out again, and it wasn’t clear until this morning that we would be good to go.

Dig with a shovel, and you won’t burn your hands. There was a tub next to me that was so hot it was unsafe to step in.

We didn’t stay long, as we needed to be up the road for kayaking to Cathedral Cove. F and I have been kayaking to Marble Cathedrals in Chile, and just last week, we walked through Cathedral Cave in the Catlins, so we were pretty sure most Cathedrals are rock formations.

We stopped and swam – or more accurately, practiced our acro-inspired jumps: one person goes under and the other person stands on their shoulders and then both jump at the same time, launching the flying (flabby) fish, not infrequently resulting in a “flat white” back flop.

We paddled out to some islands, and through a narrow tunnel with the swell pushing us through.

On the return, we stopped at hot water beach again, ostensibly to use the fresh water outdoor showers so we could rinse off at least some of the sand, but with the ocean right there, we couldn’t resist playing in some super fun big waves first (Jessi had already lost her contact lenses to these waves in the first visit).

I must recommend Felicity as roadtrip buddy. Not only will she happily (and hastily) do all the driving, but she is meticulous about packing sufficient snacks and is game to belt out whatever we find on the radio, regardless of whether we know it or not. When we were stopped at a road check, she was asked to use the breathalyser. Or more precisely, the cop asked her to count from one to five, and F promptly blew on it until the cop repeated the instructions – apparently you just say “1, 2, 3, 4, 5” here! It’s just as well they didn’t ask her to walk in a straight line as she had no shoes or pants on.

Alice

PS.

Okay, with the exception of the tour of the Burgess Shale by a real geologist, I tend to have more questions about rocks than guides can answer. 

Today, I learned that the Cathedral Cove was formed from rhyolite, but beyond being a volcanic flow, I needed to do more digging (ha ha). 

I figured out that rhyolite is an extrusive igneous rock made when the viscous lava (think toothpaste-flow) quickly cools. Interestingly, it has the same silica-rich composition as granite and pumice, and obsidian. The differences are mainly on how they solidify. 

Granite forms slowly underground (intrusive), so there’s time for larger crystals to form. 

Rhyolite cools at the surface (extrusive), and forms more quickly so crystals are small. 

Pumice is also extrusive but water and air gets trapped and makes it a bit frothy.

Obsidian is also extrusive, but with no air or water content and it cools veeery quickly. 

Okay, I’ll stop there!