This week has been all about the coromandel beaches! We’ve turned into right beach bums and been trying to decide on our perfect beach!

It’s a tough life considering the fineness of sand, clearness of water, added extras of beach swings hanging from Pohutukawa trees and then of course there’s the sandcastle factor! It sure is a tough decision! (Sorry to all those in the uk this is probably not what you want to read on a cold Jan morning!)

For the first 3 nights we booked a beautiful little Airbnb on the Matarangi beach. It’s was a cute little 2 floor beach bach, only about 50 metres from the beach! It was so lovely to fall asleep and wake to the sounds of the ocean.

Every morning we pulled on clothes and went for a quick walk on the beach, such a great start to the day! And definitely cleared the head ready for a little maths and English! Our hosts were so friendly and kindly let us borrow their bodyboards and sea kayaks one afternoon. Although the clear water was cool, Molly and Den were in there straight away paddling about, leaving Daisy and I to relaxing in the warm sand! This beach was definitely one of our favourites, the unbelievably soft white sand sort of twinkled in the sun and to be at the end of our garden, just perfect!

On our second day we decided to find New Chums Beach, now this beach has made its way into the top ten of the beaches in the world list! So we could hardly just drive by! There isn’t really a pathway to the beach and it can only be reached during low tide by scrambling over the rocks, through the bush and around the rocky headland. When we finally made it to the beach after the 30 minute trek we had a perfect golden sweeping beach stretching out in front of us, with a rocky backdrop and little caves for the children to climb in, Pohutukawa trees overhanging to give shade (and the girls to climb in!!!) and gentle lapping waves to splash in! Beautiful! It was a little cloudy and there was a bit of a breeze when we were there but we could all still see why it had found its place on the list!

Yesterday we moved south on the eastern side of the coromandel to a lovely town called Tairua. On the way down we stopped at the whitianga museum for a school trip! The museum is filled with some wonderful exhibits from the areas Polynesian past, James cook adventures to marine and plant life! A real gem of a museum! The girls loved the James Cook area, seeing his journeys light up on the huge interactive map, and the model of the extinct life size Moa was a surprise when you came round the corner! It was crammed full of things for the children to do, and we spent a long time enjoying it all.

So after a quick picnic in the park afterwards we continued to our new Airbnb stopping at Hahai beach on the way! Another contender for my favourite beach! It’s a popular holiday beach with a very chilled out vibe, we parked up and bought some scrummy ice creams for the walk down to the beach. We didn’t swim here but really enjoyed relaxing in the sun on the warm sand and the girls LOVED the rope swings hanging from the trees that lined the beach! I think we’ll be back to this one this week as we need to check our cathedral cove and hot water beach nearby, another two beaches only reached only at low tide.

This week we also said goodbye to our family that came to see us, it’s been so wonderful to share part of our big adventure with them, and especially lovely to have them here for Christmas. The next few days will be strange as we get use to being just the four of us again! We will miss you all.

Xxxx

New chums beach

Matarangi beach

Whitianga Museum

Hahai beach

A few pics of our Airbnb because it’s just so cute! ☺️