Happy New Year!

In case anyone was wondering what the holidays are like on the other side of the world... you could probably just say much warmer... other than that they are quite similar. Since it is our summer here we decided to embrace this warm weather and head to the beach for New Years. We headed north to a region called Coromandel Peninsula. Here's some pics...

The town/beach where we were staying was Whangamata. This is the beach. It's pretty sweet. It was named one of the best beaches in NZ. According to the tourist stuff it is most famous because of the white sand beach, and the combination of the beach and rain forest that surrounds it (you can sort of see it on that island in the pic).

We rented kayaks one of the days to go around some of the islands and stuff... it was pretty cool, but sort of tiring. Sorry, someone should have warned you about the gun show!

This is a tree on one of the islands. Sweet pose Cassie!

This is the view from the island we kayaked to. The weather wasn't the best this day, but it never rained and was warm so it wasn't too bad (It was the only day of clouds, so can't complain).

This is hot water beach. It's a pretty famous (and popular) beach in NZ. Not the most picture-esque beach we went to, but it was cool. The smartest person I know can explain it better than I can. Check out the link...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Water_Beach

The last beach we went to was called Cathedral Cove. You had to park and hike for about 45 min to get there and this was the view from parking lot (that's not actually cathedral cove down there... its a different beach).

This is the view from the start of the hike. Cathedral cove is the beaches down there by those boats.



These are pics of Cathedral Cove. There are essentially two beaches and you have to go underneath a natural rock bridge to get between the two.

Well that was pretty much our trip... who wants to visit now?? It was a great time, but our holidays weren't the same without our family and friends. Happy New Year!!