Hot Water Beach

On the eastern side of the Coromandel Peninsula, at Hot Water Beach, you may get one of the most unusual beach experiences in New Zealand. Hot Water Beach is famous throughout New Zealand for its steaming hot waters, which can be reached with a bucket and/or spade at low tide. The water is heated to 64°C and comes from an underground geothermal river. When you travel to the beach, it is not often that you get to use a free hot pool, but here you can!

At the appropriately titled Hot Water Beach, naturally, heated mineral water bubbles out from deep under the soil and emerges through the golden sand. You can dig your own spa pool in the sand near the rocks at the southern end of the beach. Dig up to two hours before or after low tide (opens in a new window) — that is, when the tide is low enough to expose the sand with hot water underneath. It is an odd but really wonderful sensation to be lying in a pool of hot water only a few meters from the cool sea.

Location: Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand