For our next adventure we spent 4 days in a Coromandel Forest. Not on a hunting, camping or hiking trip though, but at a festival. The Rhythms of Nature Festival to be exact. More of a retreat than a festival, day time activities included yoga sessions, Thai Chi and bongo workshops. Not that Ash or I went to a single one. On an evening the forest was full of music, dance and generally good banter.

The reason we failed to attend a single workshop, was the nearby beach and beautiful weather. This was also the main influence behind the hordes of skinny dippers at the festival. Ash and I went to kick a football around on the beach, and within an hour, the amount of naked women we had seen was in double figures. We were counting.

The football was well used and even drew a comment about us being the idiots that were running around all day while everyone else was relaxing. The name calling didn’t stop at idiots, as a few hippies tried to attach the name pippin to Gav and then to me. We were not having that. But more importantly Ash got called Jesus! This was only a couple of days after he claimed that he would keep his beard until someone referred to him as Jesus. Thankfully he didn’t make any rash decisions and the beard is still here.

The warm weather also allowed Ash and I have our first surf for a few weeks. Thanks to Gav’s mate Daz for lending us his board, and even more generously offering to lend us his station wagon!

The festival was great fun and it was a pleasure to spend time in the The Coromandel, specifically the Prana resort , which was the festival venue. It was easily the most relaxing weekend I’ve had in ages.

We thought we put a cherry on the icing, and drive back via the thermal beach in Waikato. Supposedly hot springs filter up through the sand at low tide. We grabbed a spade and joined the other excited tourists, waiting eagerly for the tide to retreat so they could dig a big hot pool in the sand. Unfortunately the big swell meant there wasn’t much of a low tide, and the most we got was a hot feet, and that was only at one small point on the beach. It was funny watching everyone at the beach with their spades, trying to find hot water, but we were gutted not to get the full hot water beach experience.