Hot Water Beach

Hot Water Beach is on the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula, south of Whitianga. For two hours either side of low tide, a patch of sand a few metres across can be dug into and fills with geothermal water hot enough to be uncomfortable.

The mechanism is straightforward and unusual. Two underground fissures carry water heated by deep volcanic rock to the surface at this exact point on the beach, at up to around 64°C. Dig a hole, let it fill, mix in seawater to make it bearable, and sit in it — which is what several hundred people do at once on a summer low tide, in a stretch of sand the size of a tennis court.

The rest of the beach is ordinary open Pacific coast with a serious rip. Hot Water Beach has one of the higher rescue counts in New Zealand: people concentrate on the hot pools, swim without paying attention, and the current takes them. Lifeguards patrol in season and the flags matter here more than at most beaches. The fissures feeding the spring are part of the same geothermal system that runs under the whole Coromandel, which was mined for gold in the nineteenth century for the same geological reason.

Facilities are a car park, a café, toilets and spade hire, which is a real business. The tide times are published everywhere locally and are the only thing that determines whether a visit works. Hahei and Cathedral Cove are twenty minutes north, which is why most visitors do the two in a day and time the hot pools around the tide rather than the other way round.

Two hours either side of low tide, a spade, and a hole you dig yourself that fills at sixty-four degrees. Outside that window there is nothing to see. The rest of the beach has one of the highest rescue counts in New Zealand because people watch the pools and stop watching the sea.