Hamner Springs

We have been to Hamner three times before but we absolutely love it so we had to go back again. We stayed at the NZMCA park again and while the weather wasn’t beautiful and sunny, it was still nice enough to let us do the walks and things we wanted to do.

Hamner has wonderful facilities for visitors, and one of the places we love best are the sculpture walks in the forest. We have taken Oscar (our standard schnauzer, who has since passed away) there in the past and he was a lot of fun because he really got into the sculptures, whereas, despite Bruce’s best efforts, Hunter and Beau just were not interested. The walk is about 2 kilometers though and the dogs and us really enjoyed it.

The first thing that was noticeable were all the beautiful red toadstools. There were hundreds scattered about, probably due to the recent rain. Beautiful as they are, they are very toxic – red for danger. Luckily the dogs were not interested in them.

It was fun following the “dog” signs in the forest and coming across the various wooden art works.

We managed to get the dogs to pose next to some, but it took a bit of effort.

In all, we went through the forest twice, and another walk took us across the highway from the camp, and towards the river bank. The track was very uneven, with large mud puddles and if you tried to dodge those, you had to contend with blackberry vines, but it was still a nice walk.

We arrived just in time to see the Hamner jet boat speeding by, but I didn’t manage to catch a photo of it.

On our last day in Hamner Springs, we actually went to the springs for a soak. The whole complex is a wonderful set up. Many different pools, including a full sized swimming pool for swimming laps, and at least 4 different waterslides. Bruce and I enjoyed riding the circular track pool with fast flowing water (like tame water rapids). There were foam rings and flutter boards available for anyone to use in this pool and it was a bit of fun. There are smaller rock pools, very hot pools, water jet pools and medium temperature pools. I think we spent 2 1/2 hours there and all for a very reasonable price of $22 per person (compared to $70 per person for the Lost Springs in Whitianga).

We could easily have stayed longer, but there is more to see, so after doing the various housekeeping tasks (laundry, filling and emptying tanks etc), we headed out onto the highway again. This time there was a bit of anxiety about it as there was a severe wind warning for the area, – strong winds and high sided vehicles are not a good mix!