The Black Lung is a Procrastinator, but that doesn't mean she didn't enjoy the last few days of vacation, Part 7: The End

The morning after we became super accomplished blacksmiths was the steam punk parade in Thames, the town where we were staying. That weekend was the steampunk festival, which our host thought brought us to town in the first place (I may have already talked about this, but if I can't remember writing it, you almost certainly can't remember reading it). Our host was in the parade for some reason, I think just because she had friends who were doing it. So we went and watched. It was very weird and only kind of related to steam punk as Leah and I understand it. But still kind of fun. Also this morning was when our host told us about a big steam punk ball she went to the night before. Apparently a man (not her boyfriend, who we met) invited her and said he had bought an extra ticket, so she went because it sounded neat. Then it turned out, he didn't have an extra ticket at all, he was just going to sneak her in. I'm pretty sure she had never felt more alive.

Wee! A parade!

After the parade, we decided to go on a hike to see an entire grove of Kauri trees! We had seen one Kauri tree previously, but as you recall, they're in a lot of trouble due to intense levels of logging in the past and Kauri dieback disease now. So seeing a whole grove sounded pretty neat. Unfortunately for us, we were still feeling the physical strain of the last several days. Also, to get to the trail head, you have to drive across very, very low bridge. I think the water was only a couple of inches below the surface of the bridge. If I'm recalling correctly, there were line on the bridge that said not to cross if the water was above that level, but we were a little nervous about it anyway. What if it started rainig while we were out??? Spoiler alert-we did not die from drowning, so it worked out.

From where we parked, it was about an hour hike to the Kauri grove. Also, other people parked past us further up the trail, because they are wimpy cheaters. Plus they don't fear breaking rules about parking like we did. Most of the walk was not too bad. We did have to cross some water and got very wet feet, so that was a bummer. And we passed some abandoned mine shafts, which I always enjoy. We also passed a bunch of other people coming and going from the grove. The big problem was that right at the end there are a bunch of staircases to take you to the top where the grove is. No!!!! Stairs are the worst. We had come prepared though, with water and snacks, so we could at least rest when we reached the top.

This is part of the path. There is literally no way across without getting your feet wet. 

Crossing into the danger zone for the Kauris. Much like our other Kauri hike, this is where we had to disinfect our feet.

This stile made me feel like a genteel lady, even though there were no handsome gentlemen to help us over. Good thing we are strong, independent women who don't need help from no man!

Mine Shaft!

I still can't get over how green and beautiful everything is in New Zealand.  

Some of the many stairs to the top. Most of the Kauris were growing along the sides of the stairs with some really big ones at the top. 

 We made it! I think this was the biggest of the Kauri trees that we saw, but there are a bunch. We counted at least 20.  

A bunch of Kauri trees together. Pictures didn't capture how giant these trees are. 

Like they're giant around and giant tall. Crazy big trees. 

A new fern, getting ready to unfold. This is what we tried and mostly failed to capture in my doorknocker. 

After a nice rest we headed back to the car. There were a lot of other trails into the bush, so if we had been hardcore backpackers or people who wanted to hike all day, we definitely could have gone farther. I mean, we obviously didn't want to, but if you ever plan a New Zealand trip, you could! We were also very hungry, in spite of our snacks, so we went to the Cheese Barn for lunch. Alas, we did not take any pictures, but it's a place that sells cheese pretty exclusively. They also have a little farm with animals. So it's basically great. We very much enjoyed our cheese platter, plus we bought some cheese for later. Yo, I just consulted Leah, and maybe we got cheese before we hiked? This is the problem with procrastinating. We just don't really remember. But both of those things definitely happened on that Saturday. Maybe other stuff also happened? There's no way to know. Hey, I'm pretty sure we also went grocery shopping. Such a thrill filled life.

After all of these definitely happened but not necessarily in that order, we decided to be lazy and watch a movie. We bought the 1960s version of Batman, plus some Cherry Ripes, which are a great and delicious candy. Then we watched it on Leah's computer and had a great time. Honestly, this was the kind of activity we mostly did when we both lived in the same place. 

Sunday morning was time to head back to Leah's house. Our host at the Airbnb was very disappointed that we didn't want to say and eat a leisurely breakfast with her. I hope she has made some friends since then. But we had to leave early to get to church in Rotorua on time! This day, Rotorua was exceptionally stinky. Like way more than the other days we were there. But church was great, and so was our delicious lunch that we ate. We were mostly taking the same route back to Leah's because it was fastest, but we did get to stop along the way and see the giant boot! I think they make rain boots in the town where the giant boot is, but I couldn't swear to it. There was also a "walk" behind the boot, which was short, but insanely steep. Leah was like, "Nope!" but I powered up the hill and made it to the top. And since Leah wasn't there, there were no witnesses to how hard I was breathing.

This boot would protect your whole body from the rain, not just your feet.

The whole path up the hill was not this steep. Only about 75% of it.

No witnesses to my breathing, but I did document my sweatiness. 

The tiny town below. It was a good view.

The rest of the day was driving and stopping to admire the scenery, and then driving some more. We were very happy to get back to Leah's, even though we saw some beautiful sites along the way. Monday was the day I was heading back to the US, so we decided to have a pretty chill day of just hanging out like we used to. We ate some ice cream and watched Mystery Science Theater, 3000 on Netflix. We also went to a really nice botanical garden and looked at roses and other plants. It was a great reminder that autumn in Baltimore is spring in New Zealand. 

A beautiful wintery mountain that we saw along the road. No idea what it is, but we liked it. 

 I just love yellow flowers. I can't help it. 

 Back on the "ugly" side of the mountain.

I took so many pictures of roses, you guys don't even know. 

 I am only sharing the best ones.

But there were many, many more!

Palmerston North's wind farm up on the hill. We saw this from the botanical gardens. I wish I had a wind farm.

Then it was time for me to go home. Not gonna lie, I cried, and not just at the thought of travelling so far again. It was sad to leave my friend! Hopefully she will live there long enough for me to be able to afford to go back. There were many things we didn't have the time or money to see, so another trip would be great. I am also happy to report that the trip back didn't seem quite as long or as traumatic. It was definitely both of those things, but I handled it better for some reason. Still gonna be more careful about layovers in the future though.

Farewell for now, cool friend and cool place!

See all y'all next time on...The Black Lung!!!

The Black Lung Tries out a Backup Career, Part 6: Our Wimpy Chickens Come Home to Roost

The morning after our kayaking/beach adventure, we had to wake up early, like 6:00, which was a real kick in the pants. We had an appointment-with destiny! Or not, as the case may be. Anyhow, the waking up period was no good for me. I legit could not lift my arms higher than shoulder level. My arms, upper back, shoulders, abs, and calves all hated me so much. But hey, no worries, we were only about to do one of the most physically demanding things of vacation. In retrospect, we should have done some of the super hard things further apart.

The reason we had to get up so early was because our blacksmithing class was down kind of near Hobbiton. It would have been much easier to do that on the day after Hobbiton instead of driving back down, but classes are only offered on weekends, so we just went back. Of course, during the day when we mentioned it, they were like, "Dang, we totally would have accommodated you on a different day if we had known," except more New Zealandy. And we never would have thought to ask at all! I feel like there's a lesson here.

We spent the day at Kowhai Forge (apparently in Maori, the wh makes the same sound as f. I'm pretty sure. Maori speakers, feel free to jump in here to correct me). The blacksmith is a guy named Rob, and the forge is in a barn behind his house. His wife, who was super nice, was named Arja. I think she's from Denmark? Somewhere in Europe, anyway. We didn't really know how long it was going to take us to get there, so we left in plenty of time, and were, of course, early. I was basically asleep in the car, and we were just going to awkwardly chill in their driveway until 9:00, which was about half an hour away, but luckily, they saw us and invited us to hang out with them in their house until it was time to start. They had a couple of very cute little kids, a great dog named Tui (like the bird), and a super unique and beautiful house. I think they had done a lot of the work on the house themselves, which was neat. Anything made of metal, like the door knobs and bathroom fixtures were made by Rob, so we could immediately see the greatness that we aspired to.

We had talked a bit with Arja over email about what kind of projects we wanted to do, so while we were hanging out waiting for the other person taking the class, Rob asked us a bit more about it. Leah had decided to make a pizza knife, and I had wanted to try making a door knocker, because they are great and I have a door. Rob seemed kind of worried about the door knocker, like, "I don't know if we will have time to make something so difficult!" but also into the challenge of doing something so complex. But the door knocker was not my idea! It was one of the ideas in the confirmation email! I wonder if they took that off the option list after we visited. 😃 Apparently no one else had ever taken them up on that particular project before.

The other person taking the class with us was this extremely young looking redhead. He was just doing half day, and his very young looking wife was also there, hanging out and taking pictures. I don't remember their names, but seriously, he looked maybe 25, and she looked like a teenager. They had driven to the forge in their electric car, which I think is super neat. He was doing some sort of battle reenacting the next day, as a roman legionnaire, I think, so his project was to make a spear head.

Each of us had our own little forge to work with. They looked sort of like the barbecue grills they have in parks, except super flaming hot. We also had little anvils next to our forges. We started off with pieces of rebar to get the technique down. We were supposed to heat our rebar, then when it was literally flaming hot, hammer it on the anvil to make it longer and thinner, and eventually to curl over on itself like a fern frond. I was not good at this. Leah also struggled with it, and the redhead was some kind of ringer. He was very good at it! Rob kept saying that being a blacksmith is not about power-it's about leverage! Apparently, we have neither of those things. I do feel that I could have done better if I had been able to easily lift my arms like I normally can. Not great, but better.

My very own anvil! This picture accurately represents how high I could easier lift my arm.

You can tell I was working hard. Look at my concentration face. Also, the way I am holding that hammer is extremely awkward, but in my defense, every part of my body felt like death.

After we got at least kind of OK at doing our rebar stuff, we got started on our individual projects. Rob had a big table with a pile of scrap metal on it that we used for all of our stuff. My door knocker was made from a piece of metal that looked kind of like a heavy duty wrench, plus another flat piece of metal and a couple of small things, and frankly I don't know what any of them were originally. Leah's knife was also a flat metal thing, and it was very cool to see them slowly turn into other stuff. So what I was supposed to be doing was lengthening and smoothing my long wrench thing (that is such a bad description, but I have nothing else). I had to keep switching arms that I was hammering with, mostly because after a while, it became almost impossible to keep my grip on the hammer. Honestly, I couldn't grip things for about 4 days after. Fun times. I tried to sign a receipt a couple of days after this, and I could barely hold the pen. I was also supposed to use my rebar skills to twist the top of the metal into a fern-like swirl. That was very hard. All of it was very hard! Whenever Rob felt like we had suffered enough, he would take our various pieces of metal and stick them in the giant, super hot forge for a while. Then he'd use what I can only describe as a giant electric smasher thing to get our metal to flatten more. Otherwise, we would almost certainly still be there, trying to get our metal to change shape. The fern-like swirl was basically impossible. I conquered the swirl so much with my rebar, but I couldn't get it with my door knocker. Rob couldn't get it either, though. I think he started to take it really personally, so he worked on it for a while as well, using a giant clamp to hold it while he bent it. It never quite curled like he wanted it to, which makes me feel better about my lack of skills, to be honest.

Leah hard at work with her flaming hot forge. 

The other big piece of my door knocker was the back plate, which Rob helped me to make look like the tail of a fantail. He actually did almost all of it, but I put the grooves in! My favorite part of blacksmithing was when I got to use the giant sledge hammer. For those times, Rob would hold the piece and shift it while I struck the vicious blows! It was also hard, but very fun, and I felt super cool. The other thing I felt moderately successful at was using the metal grinder to grind down the rough edges on a couple of the pieces that had sharp edges that you don't want to be sharp when it's on your door. Seeing the sparks fly made me feel awesome. I also was not too bad at using the special tool to poke holes in the back plate so the door knocker can actually be hung on a door.

Striking the vicious blow with the sledgehammer!

We also took several breaks throughout the day-they served us morning tea (with some super delicious brownies) and lunch, and we all sat in their super amazing back yard and relaxed with Tui the dog. I wish I had pictures of Tui. We were great friends by the end of the day. I'm not sure I would want to live so much in the middle of nowhere, but it was an amazingly beautiful place (welcome to New Zealand). Also at this point, the ringer and his wife left, so we no longer had to be compared to his natural skill level.

Proof! I did not just pose for pictures!

After lunch, Leah and I went back to work. Blacksmithing is amazingly sweaty, because not only are you working out like crazy, also, the heat from the forge is super intense. It was kind of cool when we got to Kowhai in the morning, but that didn't last. I'm not sure how hot it gets in New Zealand, but I definitely don't envy Rob his work in the summer. Leah's project was simpler than mine-I think hers was only one piece that was then shaped? So she finished first and got to spend time sharpening it. That looked really fun and awesome. I was very jealous, as I was still whacking my stuff with a hammer and making no progress. She also helped me with my project, which was great. The two of us worked together to put the lines down the sides of the back plate! We will not mention that Rob had to redo one of them totally because we did such a bad job. He was very patient with us. Rob did cheat a little bit and weld one of the bits on-he had us do everything else the old fashioned way, but we were running out of time. I didn't even care though, because it looks awesome.

With Rob, our intrepid teacher.

Guys, I'm not gonna lie, this is hard to write about. It was super interesting and fun to do though! It was also pretty $$, so I probably couldn't afford to do it all the time, but I would want to do it again for sure. Although, since it's been like 6 months, I have definitely lost all my muscle that I built, and I would have to start from scratch. Also not gonna lie, I still haven't hung up my door knocker. Basically, it's too majestic for my current house! I keep going back and forth about whether to hang it up anyway. I need to move into a stately stone mansion for it to look really right.

 The fruits of my labor!

A close-up of the door knocker in its current home on this chair. Notice the lines along the side and also the kind of fern-like swirl at the top.

At the end of the day, we headed back to Coromandel. I'm glad Leah was driving because I almost certainly would have struggled to hold the steering wheel. Overall, I'd say we didn't really find back up careers, but we did find a cool hobby that we are too weak and poor to actually do. Basically the same thing.

Next time, on The Black Lung: The Black Lung tries to wrap this sucker up.

The Black Lung Has No Strength and No Nutrients, Part 5: Nature Tries to Kill Us Because We are Weak

The night after we left Hobbiton was to be honest, Not Great, Bob. We did go get some Hokey Pokey ice cream at a convenience store, so that was awesome. Hokey Pokey is something that should definitely come to the US. It's really good. According to the internet, it's honeycomb toffee, which I don't really know what that means. But so yummy. The problem came in when we got to our lodgings for the night. Most of the rest of vacation was going to be in Coromandel, which is a peninsula up north on the North Island. So we had booked this place for 5 nights. Plus, it was very late and we were very tired when we finally got there. But friends, it was gross. I mean, I kind of respect a photographer who can make a place that is pretty darn old look good in pictures. But to actually not clean the place before we came was going too far! Also, it was a cabin type of situation, which means that the bathrooms were not attached. We knew this beforehand, but combined with the grossness of the sleeping/eating facilities, we were not happy. And the beds were very uncomfortable! And it was a very windy, very stormy night, so it felt like we were going to blow away the whole night long. Basically, we stayed that night because it was so late, but we immediately cancelled the rest of our stay and found another place for the other 4 nights. Honestly, we felt a little bad, because the lady who owned the cabin was very nice, but what can you do? The place we stayed for the other 4 nights was very nice, and the owner even let us use her washing machine, which was great. The only issue with her was that she seemed to really want to hang out with us, which was weird. She told us that she was pretty recently divorced, and she seemed to want to recapture her lost youth. Little did she know, we are secretly old people, so we were no help in that regard.

The morning we left our sad sleeping place was kind of a bummer. It was rainy and windy and we might have stayed indoors for a couple of hours in other circumstances, but we had to go out, because we couldn't check into our new place until the evening. We also didn't have any definitive plans aside from going to the beach, but since the weather was terrible, we decided to drive up the coast and see what happened. Almost all of New Zealand that we were in was very hilly/mountainous, but Coromandel seems especially so. In fact, it was this day that I got so carsick that we stopped in the town of Coromandel and got some motion sickness medication from a pharmacy. We also stopped at a cafe and got some hot chocolate. The hot chocolate there is so creamy. I'm not really sure what they do to it to make it so good, but they have succeeded! Also in the town, they told us about a short hike just outside of town where we could see a Kauri tree! Kauri trees are really enormous, kind of Redwood size I'd say. They grow very tall, very thick, and very straight. Apparently they were in high demand when European settlers first came to New Zealand, because they were great for making masts for sailing ships and other building projects. So, like people, they cut down way too many of them. Now they're protected, so I'm pretty sure no one is allowed to cut them down. But now also, they are being threatened by a disease called Kauri dieback disease. When you enter a grove/path to a grove, and when you leave, there are shoe cleaning stations. We got our feet extremely wet in these stations, but I'm not sure if that was by design, or if that was all of the rain. Anyhow, hopefully it works, because Kauris are very majestic and awesome, and it would really stink if they died. The grove we hiked in only had one Kauri tree, but there were tons of other native plants, which were also beautiful and very cool. And it was a pretty lowkey hike, which definitely affected what happened next.

I think this was right before we took our hike? Or it might have been a stop along the way where we ate breakfast. In any case, look at how stormy it was!

One of the awesome trees along the path. I believe that the troll from Ernest Scared Stupid lives here.

The Kauri Tree! It was set back from the path a bit, so it was even bigger than it looks in this picture.

Part of this trail took us right on the edge of the beach. It was kinda slippery and muddy from all the rain, which had thankfully stopped at this point.

I think this was also part of the trail? Not totally sure, but look how pretty New Zealand is!

On our drive across the peninsula, we came across this nice little waterfall. It was very, very loud. 

The weather was still cloudy, but beginning to clear a bit, so we decided to keep driving around/across the peninsula to see if we could reach Cathedral Cove, which is one of those landmarks everyone says you should visit. And awesomeness, the weather kept clearing the closer we got! By the time we reached the cove parking area, it was a beautiful sunny day. We also got the last free parking space in the lot, which was thrilling. Cathedral Cove is a beautiful beach that is only accessible by foot or by boat. Because people wanted to keep it pristine, they didn't do any sort of development or roads down to the beach. There is a nice lookout near the parking lot, and then there's a trail that goes down to the beach. There are signs at the beginning of the trail saying it's about a 45 minute walk to Cathedral Cove, with other trails that branch off and have shorter walk times. I think the other trails were just naturey, or maybe led to other lookout points, but we don't know for sure, because we definitely didn't use them. We thought, hey, 45 minute walk isn't bad! Surely it won't really take that long because they definitely put a long time for slow walkers. We are not slow walkers! Ha! Let me tell you what, this was a herculean trial for us. First of all, when they say "walk" they don't mean a nice, gentle trail that is at most a very gentle incline. This trail was up and down, crazy steep both ways. Every time we went down a lot and thought we were surely approaching the beach, the trail suddenly went steeply back up! Because of knee issues, I struggle with steep downhill stretches (I call it my trick knee-the trick it does is that it tries to buckle when I am going down). And Leah struggles with the steep uphill! It was a hiking comedy of errors. Also, when they say 45 minutes, they mean it. We could not shave any time off that sucker. In fact, I'm pretty sure it took us longer. Also, because we misunderestimated the trail and thought it would be easy, breezy, beautiful covergirly, we did not take any water or snacks. Yes, we were truly stupid. The last stretch was a bunch of really steep staircases in a row. They would have been rough even if we hadn't just hiked for an hour, but at the end of that, it did not feel great. But at last, we made it to the beach! Our wimpyness really felt amplified by the amount of kind of old people and people carrying babies and stuff who were down there. Of course, maybe they also felt like they were going to die?

At the lookout point! Little did we know what horror was in store.

One of the lovely views along the hike. At least it was a pretty hike, even if it was also hideous.

Another view from the trail. If it had been ugly, we legit would have given up. 

This very cool tree was growing on a rock right in the middle of the trail. And though we did not know it at the time, it's right before the evil staircases that lead to the beach.

Cathedral Cove is truly breathtaking, which explains why so many people were there in spite of the tricky hike. I can't even imagine how many people would be there if it was easily accessible. We did see some people come onto the beach using kayaks while we were there. At the time, that seemed like maybe a better choice, but spoiler for later, kayaking is also hard. Anyhow, when we first got to the bottom of the stairs, we just took our shoes off and relaxed in the sand for a while. To the right, there was a small waterfall coming over the cliff onto the sand. There are a lot of standing rocks in the water that were probably at one time attached to the cliffs, and there's one giant rock arch with another part of the beach on the other side. It honestly reminded me of Arches National Park, with the arch and the standing stones that were arches once upon a time. Except there's also the ocean. We spent a lot of time down at the cove, splashing in the water, taking in the awesome beauty of the place, and relaxing. And truly, only part of that was because we were too tired to go back up the trail. But eventually, we got so thirsty and hungry that we felt it was time to head back up. Friends, going up was rough. I thought it would be easier because we knew what to expect, but it was harder because we were already so tired! And the up and down, up and down kept going! But we did eventually make it to the car park, and on the way, we say a tui in the wild! The very tui whose picture I posted in my blog about birds.

We did it! We are down on the beach! 

The little waterfall! It came down to the beach the easy way.

Maybe this small cave will be an arch one day. 

 We're so happy to be alive! 

 There I am in the arch. The tiny one on the right. It's a very big arch.

Leah was very brave-she went all the way into the water to touch the big rock!

We sat on these rocks and looked out at the water for a very long time.

Back at the top! We felt terrible! 

At this point, we ran into another problem-many places in New Zealand have multitudes of cafes, but not a lot of restaurants. This is fine at lunch time, but they all close at like 3:00, so if you want dinner or a late snack, you are out of luck! If I'm remembering right, this happened to us more than once. But it seemed exceptionally terrible this day because we were exhausted! We did eventually find a restaurant that was open, but it was definitely after we stopped at more than one place that turned out to be closed.

We had to drive back across the peninsula to reach our next stopping place/new place of abode in Thames. In my memory, it was about midnight when we got there, but it was still light out, so I know it wasn't that late. We were just very tired. We went to bed early and slept super late the next morning. I'm pretty sure we didn't get up until about 10! I never sleep that late, mostly because my dog wakes me up, and if he's not there, my bladder starts freaking out hours before that. But still, it was good to sleep. We hadn't really planned anything for this day either, but we had tentatively talked about going kayaking! We were able to find one that seemed pretty reasonably priced (based on absolutely no experience for me) that they told us on the phone would not be too hard for someone who had never kayaked/can't swim (me). We did have to drive back to the other side of the penisula again. We didn't plan super well on this-if we go again, we would stay on the other side so we wouldn't have to keep driving over there! 

Anyhow, when we got to the kayaking place, they got us hooked up with some wetsuits, which are hilariously tight. I felt like a sexy sea lion. We were going out with 3 German tourists and our guide, who was really awesome. She was a very cool Kiwi lady, and I could not figure out how old she was. She looked like she was probably mid to late 30s, but she had so much adventurous life experience! Anyhow, we were divided into 3 kayaks, and while I had no idea what I was doing, Leah basically is a pro, so she was in the back of our kayak and is definitely the reason that it moved at all. Also, at least one of the guys also had no idea what he was doing, which made me feel better about myself. At the beach where we were, there were a couple of little islands right off shore, which is where we were going on our kayaks. First we had to get into our kayaks, which was really tricky, because you basically have to run and jump into it like an Olympic bobsledder, but in the ocean. We did get about 30 seconds of instruction beforehand to teach us how to paddle, but I was not good at it. Leah was really the power behind us and also the person who was steering. I did my best, which was not very good, and also Leah kept having to tell me to adjust my paddle so that I was actually scooping water in a way that was helpful. Funnily enough, whether or not your paddle is moving the kayak, it still really hurts your arms/shoulders/muscles that I didn't realize I had. Well, I didn't have the muscles, which is why I struggled so much. But there technically are muscles in those places.

Kayaks! Leah said that other kayaks she has been in you're more down in it, but these we were kind of perched on top. We could have fallen out without too much trouble. 

The first island was called Donut Island, because there's a hole in the middle of it! We kayaked around to the back of the island, then we went through a tunnel into a pool that is in the middle of the island, open to the sky. That makes the whole process sound pretty simple, but it took a while and a lot of hard paddling to get through the waves and through the tunnel. But we succeeded like the total She-Ras we are. It was amazingly beautiful and magical. Our guide called it a mermaid pool, which is exactly how it looked. We were invited to jump in the water, but it was frigid, so we stayed in our kayak. Then we had to kayak back out the tunnel, around the island, to the next island over. I don't know if this one had a name. If it did, it wasn't catchy like Donut, so I don't remember it. Even though we had our little Donut break (lols, if only there had been pastries), by the time we got to the second island, my muscles were scream-crying. They were very unhappy with me and my life choices. Luckily, we had a nice break on this island where we could stretch our legs, walk around the beach a little, lie on the sand, and eat an orange. Which we did. But then our guide, after definitely not enough time resting, said we were going to go on a 10 minute hike if we wanted. 10 minutes doesn't sound bad, right? But remember the day before, when we had our 45 minute walk, which turned out to be a longer-than-that hike? The 10 minute hike was full on cliff climbing. If I have to push myself up with my legs and pull myself up with my hands, we are not hiking anymore! Also, we were not wearing shoes, so that was tough. Leah, because of her uphill problem, only went about 1/3 of the way up, which was a good choice. It was intense! The view was nice, and I felt very accomplished, but it was more work than accomplishment I think. Plus, going down was terrifying and hard. Still, go me! After that, we kayaked back to shore, and it was kind of easier, because the water was moving that way overall, but kind of harder because waves, and we were already so tired!

The tunnel! This is when we were inside. When we were outside, we were paddling and could not take pictures.

Our well-deserved rest in the mermaid pool.

While we were floating, that one German guy got in the water and immediately froze.

The water was so clear! We were somewhat concerned that we would hit those dark spots, which were actually giant rocks.

Looking straight up from the pool inside Donut Island.

The beach on the second island. I think that lump at the end is Donut Island.

Before we knew about the "hike" yet to come. The land on the right is the mainland.

The path up the hill. Ack! It really was as steep as it looks.

The view down from the top of the hike.

I did it! This is where our guide yelled at one of the guys for going too close to the edge for a selfie.

Back at the bottom, without falling down once!

Victory! The sexy sea lion, back on the main beach with the islands in the background. We went to the one on the right first, then the one in the middle.

Overall, kayaking was very cool, and if I did it often, I think my arms/shoulders region would be insane. But only doing it once in my whole life was very painful. After kayaking, we went and got lunch and also ice cream because we were living our best vacation life, then we decided to go to the Hot Water Beach! Hot Water Beach is a beach that has hot springs under it that filter up through the sand. The beach is only accessible for a few hours a day, about two hours before and after low tide. Because of that, it's pretty crowded during those hours, unless they're weird times of day probably. The day we went, low tide was at about 4:00 I think, so the beach was very full. You can rent little shovels or bring your own, and then you go dig holes in the sand that then fill up with hot water, like a hot tub. You have to be careful though, because if you're too far off to the side of the beach, the water that comes up is too cold to be comfortable, but if you're too close to the middle, the water is so hot it will burn the heck out of you. We tried digging in several different spots before we ended up commandeering an abandoned hole that was a pretty good mix of cold spring and hot spring. It was very relaxing to lie back in the sand and let the hot water seep up behind our backs. Until the cold water seeped up, then we had to get up and dig out some hot water again. Also, when people moved into the hole next to us, every time they dug, our wall started to collapse. It's a competitive place! If I ever go again, I would try to get there right at the start of the accessible time. You have to do more digging, but you could certainly get a better spot.

My silly starlet pose, in which I wear a swimsuit to look super foxy, and a sweater because I'm frigid.

Hot Water Beach! This was a pretty cold area, so we moved on from it. 

My turn with the shovel. I look like a crazy person. Shovel faster, Meredith!

Our hot tub! It was not a very deep tub, but it was good enough for us!

It was technically spring while we were there, and the weather was very nice, but when we left Hot Water Beach, I thought we would freeze to death. We tried to shower off the sand using the beach showers, but they were icy! So we ended up driving back across the peninsula very wet and sandy. This was also the day (I'm pretty sure) that the GPS betrayed us! At some point in the drive, it said we were going the wrong way and we needed to backtrack by about 20 miles! Which, rude, you're the one who took us on this road to begin with! The road we ended up on heading back to our Airbnb was the absolute worst. It was up in the mountains, so it made me very carsick, and it was unpaved, so it was really bumpy. Also narrow, so I felt like we might plunge to our deaths at any moment. Luckily we saw only 1 or 2 other cars the entire time we were on the road, so we were able to stick to the middle mostly. Also I was afraid that rock slides would kill us. Those awful roads would definitely be the worst part of living in Coromandel. I would never leave, because I would be too scared to.

When we got home and got the sand showered off (I found sand in my hair for several days after this), it was early bedtime, because we had a morning adventure planned for the next day.

Next time, on The Black Lung: we get back to our roots, if those roots happen to be old-timey blacksmithing.