Hot Water Beach(Cathedral Cove)

If you are looking for a hotel near Hot Water Beach, there are many great nearby options.  The Tatahi Lodge Beach Resort offers many amenities including gardens, outdoor sitting areas, sunloungers, and patios.  The Church Hahei is another great hotel that offers many amenities including a library, a TV lounge, a barbecue area, a restaurant, and a garden.  Another great hotel is the Hahei Beach Resort that offers many amenities including a general store, a restaurant, a playground, barbeque areas, a communal kitchen, restrooms, and showers.  A more affordable hotel is the Paku Lodge Resort Motel that offers many amenities including rental facilities for bikes and kayaks, a communal kitchen, and a lawn with sitting areas.  If you are looking for another good and affordable nearby Hot Water Beach accommodation option,  the Hot Water Beach TOP 10 Holiday Park offers many amenities including multiple pools, a general store, surfboard rental facilities, restrooms, showers, fish cleaning station, a restaurant, and outdoor dining areas.  Another great accommodation option is staying at a campground – one of the popular campgrounds near the beach is Seabreeze Holiday Park.  

If you're planning to stay near the beach, there are several accommodations to choose from, including the Hot Water Beach TOP 10 Holiday Park, which offers camping sites, cabins, and a variety of facilities including a swimming pool and a hot tub. Another option is the Ocean View B&B, which offers stunning ocean views and a peaceful atmosphere.

Lifeguards are posted every weekend here from Labor Day to Easter in summer. In addition, lifeguards occasionally patrol this beach between December and February. This beach and the area around it offer a few other amenities, including restrooms, nearby shovel rental facilities, seasonal watersports equipment rental facilities, benches, picnic areas, changing rooms, and showers.

Hot Water Beach offers many fun activities including sunbathing, beachcombing, fishing, swimming, boating, skimboarding, jet-skiing, water-skiing, parasailing, snorkeling, scuba diving, surfing, bodysurfing, kitesurfing, windsurfing, boogie boarding, kayaking, canoeing, surf-skiing, and wildlife watching.  

This beach is ideal for slightly expert surfers because the water here sometimes offers fun surfing waves.  The northern end of this beach is an ideal surfing site.  If you plan to swim, surf, paddleboard, or kitesurf here, we recommend being careful because the considerably deep and cold ocean water here can have unpredictable rip currents, submerged sharp rocks, and dangerous waves.  In addition, the water here has a strong undertow, making it look treacherously calm on the surface – drowning cases have also been reported at this beach.  If you are a beginner swimmer, we recommend that you swim between the flags posted by the lifeguards here that indicate safe swimming areas. 

One of the most popular activities here is enjoying the hidden natural hot water springs here – these hot springs originate from underground water reservoirs heated by geothermal vents.  Visitors often visit this beach with a shovel and dig here until they see warm underground water bubbling up to the beach’s surface – these hot water pools offer great relaxation to visitors who sit within them.  It feels like you can dig your own spa pool and it offers a unique experience.  If you are planning to dig and relax in a hot water pool here, we recommend being careful because the water here can sometimes get too hot, sometimes up to 64 degrees Celsius.  Near some oceanfront cliffs, the best site to dig for hot springs here is at the beach’s southern end.  We recommend studying a Hot Water Beach tides chart before visiting because the best time to dig here is around two hours on either side of the low tide – the hot spring sites here are waterlogged at high tide.

The northern end of Hot Water Beach is ideal for visitors looking for a quieter beach experience because it sees fewer visitors as compared to other portions of the beach.  If you like taking pictures with amazing Instagram-worthy views, Hot Water Beach offers excellent views of the Pacific Ocean and the Coromandel Peninsula shoreline, particularly at sunrise.

Hot Water Beach does not offer wheelchair access to visitors with disabilities. 

Getting to Hot Water Beach is easy – from Tairua Whitianga Road – which is a part of State Highway 25 – you need to turn towards Hot Water Beach Road.  This road will lead you to multiple paid parking lots near the beach, along with a free parking lot – two of the parking lots here are located in the beach’s southern end while another one is located near the beach’s middle part.  You can visit the website of the Thames Coromandel District Council for the updated information about the parking charges here.  

We recommend visiting this beach early during the summer because this beach can get slightly crowded in the summer.  If you plan to visit Hot Water Beach, please avoid drinking and eating here because this beach is culturally significant for local Maori tribes.

Hot Water Beach is a culturally significant area for the local Maori tribe of Ngati Hei and experts believe that the area around this beach has been inhabited for thousands of years.

There are many attractions near Hot Water Beach within a 20-minute drive.  Te Whanganui-a-Hei Marine Reserve – also called Cathedral Cove Marine Reserve – is a marine reserve that has a vibrant biodiversity and underwater landscape – you can also see reefs and sea sponge gardens here, along with many fish.  There is a famous cove near the reserve named Cathedral Cove that has a large famous rock arch.  Te Pare Point Historic Reserve is a historic site that has remains of Maori fortresses and it also has a viewpoint that offers amazing views of the Coromandel Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean.  Whenuakite Kiwi Zone Lookout is a viewpoint that offers amazing Instagram-worthy views of the Coromandel Peninsula and it also has interesting exhibitions offering information on kiwi birds.  Purangi Reserve – also called Purangi Regional Reserve – is a natural reserve that is known for being a fantastic bird watching site.  In addition, this reserve also has a beach named Cook’s Beach and you can also explore this reserve through a walkway.  If you are looking for another attraction near the beach, Shakespeare Cliff Lookout is a viewpoint that offers beautiful views of the Coromandel Peninsula shoreline and the Mercury Bay.  The path to the viewpoint also offers a fun way to explore the local landscape and it is also a great bird watching site.