Day 61, in which we elect not to sit in a tepid puddle

In need of breakfast, we decided to give the Luna Café a second chance and they sank to the challenge by serving the worst poached eggs on toast I've ever eaten. Still, fuelled for the day ahead we hired snorkelling gear from the second most relaxed man in the world (who seemed largely uninterested in deposits, identity or contact details, simply repeating the Kiwi phrase 'sweet as' whenever the world struck him again as a particularly wonderful place) and walked around the coastline from Hahei beach to the small haven of Gemstone Bay.

It turns out Hahei beach is part of the Cathedral Cove marine reserve, of which Gemstone Bay has been turned over entirely to snorkelling and diving, with buoys outlining the key underwater landscapes. We slipped on our masks and flippers and pootled out into the bay. It was initially rather disappointing – comprising a range of seaweeds in slightly different shades of green – and we made the mistake of exploring a cave in the rocky edge of the bay where the tide played with the idea of smashing us against the rocks. However, after a while we stumbled across a school of large fat stripy fish who didn't seem to mind a spot of company, and they led us across the bay to a larger school of thin shiny fish, deeper down, who also didn't seem to mind humans at all.

Less common was a stripy orange fish (which only Paul saw) and some ridiculous fish with very long noses, as well as an assortment of snails and spiky sea urchins which made me wonder whether I'd ever be able to enter water barefoot again.

We climbed out of the waters with the intention of walking further round the coast to Stingray Bay, but sadly some miscreant (I used a different word at the time) had stolen our sunblock and – in a country in which you burn after six minutes – we were unable to press on without it. We retreated to the village to buy more sunblock, and it was a short step from that to a quick nap out of the sun.

Before handing back our snorkels, we decided to try wearing masks and flippers on Hahei beach. We found that the seabed is peppered with tiny shellfish who live on the sand, poking their heads out of their shells to grab a drink of water. The flippers were a terrific accelerant for riding on waves, and I've started to wonder whether there might not be something to the idea of surfing after all.

Next on our itinerary was Hot Water Beach, which sounds superb on paper but turned out to be a bit of a bun fight. Two kilometres under the beach is a vast chamber of magma super-heated to 175 degrees and directly above this is an underground lake which heats up and flows up to the surface, where its reward is to be trapped in a shallow puddle dug by a rabble of tourists, who then take great pride in sitting in their individual inch of tepid water until it cools down again. We had expected to take part, but as we pulled up and saw how many others had the same idea we just left our yellow spade in the boot and decided to treat the wallowing tourists as the spectacle. This was a much more rewarding experience.

Despite breakfast, we had dinner at the Luna Café since on Mondays The Grange is shut. We were served by a somewhat hysterical waitress who demanded that – as we had not reserved – we should order food as quickly as possible. She explained that the restaurant was about to be deluged by responsible customers who had taken the trouble to reserve and who would of course be given priority over us. We ordered two green curries as quickly as we could, but no one else seemed to bother coming in and the kitchen still moved at almost a glacial pace.