I never knew they designed 7-seater vans so small until this past weekend, when I had the pleasure of riding in the far back corner of one with a wall of sleeping bags at my head and a stack of pads jutting into my side. My toes couldn’t move between the pile of wet smelly clothes on the ground and my mud speckled backpack. Although, with a pillow lying across my chest at least I had some form of comfort. The air smelled like wet dog, my muscles burned, my head felt a little dizzy with exhaustion, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I was with 6 of the most amazing people I’ve met so far in New Zealand, coming back from an adventure that awed me in beauty.

Coromandel is known for a lot of things. For one, one of the natural rock sights there was used in Narnia’s second movie, Prince Caspian. Coromandel is also known for its hot water beach, a natural site where people dig holes in the sand near the ocean at low tide and create pools of warm water heated from the volcanic rock. In addition, Coromandel has Chum’s Bay, a beach documented as one of the top 10 beaches in the entire world. This past weekend, I experienced all of these things. We crammed a lot into the 3 days we spent here, hitting all these locations but also doing my two favorite activities thus far: a 12 km (about 7.5 mile) hike called the Pinnacles and a kayaking adventure to a place called Donut Island.

Not getting to the coast of Coromandel until 2:30pm last Friday, the guy at the rental shop almost didn’t let us rent kayaks for the day. The shop closed at 5 and to get to Donut Island and back, we would need at least 2 hours. With our word that we would be back by dark, we hauled the kayaks into the waves and set off paddling across the sea towards a series of small islands in the distance. Each of these islands jutted out from the earth, a tall skyscrapper of rock with swirling water beside caves. On the third island out, one of the caves goes through to the inside, a tunnel to a secret little paradise, hidden from the eye of any bypasser that did not know the entrance was there.

Picture clear water, a beach of white shells, sculpted rocks, and a circular rock wall on all sides. Now look up from the oasis and picture a dot of sky mostly covered by tree branches, entirely enclosing you in. That is what Donut Island feels like. It feels like one of those locations you’d see on the Bachelor and point out as somewhere you only wish you could get to. But there we were, inside this place, swimming in the sea in the middle of New Zealand’s winter, not caring that the water was turning our toes and lips blue. I don’t know how nature creatures something so beautiful. How an island can contain its own beach inside just astounds me. I could have spent an entire day there, just simply soaking in the atmosphere. Of course the water being a little warmer might have been nice, but there was something charming about being there in the winter when no one else but some crazy Americans and a couple brave Europeans would dare to kayak out and fully submerge themselves in the water. We had the whole place to ourselves. I think I do want to go back though, as a day trip to lie under the dome on that beach and feel warm.

By contrast, we were quite warm hiking our second day at Coromandel, camping at the base of a huge series of mountains and waking up at 6am for a day of hiking. The hike we did is generally considered a 2 day hike, just so you get a sense of how long the track was. Leaving around 7:30am, we walked from our campsite down a trail and crossed a small swinging rope bridge to the other side of a river to start our trek to the top. By about 10am, we were at the Pinnacles hut, a small lodge 50 minutes from the top of the mountain where many people stay for the night to see both the view at sunset and at sunrise. We skipped this view (though we did manage to see 2 gorgeous sunsets over the weekend, one over mountains and one over a beach, and one gorgeous sunrise over the beach we camped at the second night) in order to fit in all we had planned, and instead did a quick rest at the lodge and continued on to the top of the mountain, needing to climb a couple ladders and an endless set of stairs to reach the top. Oh, and we needed to hoist ourselves up using quite a few metal rings attached into the rock. So for lack of a better way of putting this, climbing this mountain was pretty much a child’s jungle gym on steroids where falling meant not just a scrap to the knee, but the possibility of death. Luckily, we all safely made it to the top though, to take in the view before us.

In the states when you climb mountains you can often see a town in the distance, or cars below, or something man made. On top of the Pinnacles there is nothing but mountains, cliffs, and an endless expansion of land. There is no end to the summits that surround you of different mountain tops, and the only thing man made is that little lodge you stopped at, but even that seems so small now. It’s windy, chillingly windy, but freeing to be so high up. I’m not sure if this is the highest mountain I’ve ever climbed. If it’s not, it’s at least up there. But the view from the top, it was probably the most gorgeous mountain view I have ever seen in my life. Though knowing this country, it will be among the most gorgeous mountain views I will be seeing.

We got back down the mountain by 2:30pm. Again, this is normally a 2 day hike that we did in half a day. We packed up camp, piled into that smelly cramped car, and set off to our next campsite an hour away on the beach near Cathedral Cove, Chum’s Bay, and Hot Water Beach. The next day was filled with beauty, salt in my hair, and sand between my toes. My calves still ache as I write this and it’s Tuesday by now, but I kind of like the feeling of stress in my muscles. It’s a reminder that you’ve done something amazing, something that you will remember forever.