Day Eight: Mt Maunganui to Whangamata, Hot Water Beach and Hahei

so this morning we woke up refreshed and energized and ready to continue on our adventure. our old bishop had told us about this little surf town called whangamata (pronounced fun-ga-ma-ta) that one of his buddies owns a little surf shop in. anything that pertained to surfing meant that we would be stoping. we town turned out to be super cute. a nice little beachie town that was clean and nice. we tried our first "pie" which is like a hand held chicken pot pie, but you can get it with different things in it. we heard from archie and pepper that these were the way to go for lunches. we tried the steak and cheese, amazing! one of the best things we had eaten the whole trip. yummy! we parked on the beach and j headed out to surf. this turned out to be his favorite surf spot of the whole trip, so im stoked we were able to make it.

next was to hot water beach. this was a beach that supposedly if you dig a whole in the sand at low tide, the rocks under ground will heat up the water and give you your own little hot tub. sounds good right? i was so stoked about this the whole trip, it sounded so fun. we got there 20 minutes after low tide (perfect timing), rented our shovel, and headed out to find the best spot. found a good one next to a rock and began digging. justin saw some waves and headed out for another surf session. i had this perfect whole, with the barrier and everything, just my size and while i was getting my camera to take a picture of it, a huge wave came in and ruined the whole thing. needless to say, i gave up on the whole hole thing! apparently everyone was having trouble getting a good working hole that day because the waves kept rushing in, maybe the swell was to big. this also didnt help them to heat up well, because the cold ocean water kept getting in the holes. im thinking this doesnt really work and that when you dig a hole, the sun heats up the water to make it feel warmer. just a thought. i decided to start playing with my camera instead, which was so much more fun in this beautiful beach. about 20 minutes up the road is a little town called hahei beach. we made this our destination for the night considering it was christmas eve, and we might not find anything if we waited to long. the only place open and with any vacancies was this "holiday park". its like a mix of a hostel, camp ground, cabins, rv park and motel. we ate at the only open resturant in town which happened to be next to the only ice cream place we had seen the whole trip. we got our cones and headed to the beach to eat them there and reflect back on our wonderful trip. we tried to go to sleep tonight but the noise outside our window was terrible. this is the only night we ever had any problems with noise and drunken neighbors, but i think it might ave been the quality of place we were staying at. they finally dismantled around 2am which left us with a broken nights sleep.