Hotwater Springs - Low Tide

Digging hot springs by yourself, make sure that the correct tide time before you come.

Very fun and unique! Come at low tide, align yourself with the hot rock and you’ll find places to dig on either side of it.

Very cool experience! It was fun digging holes to access the hot water under the sand (it gets bloody hot! Up to 64 Celcius)... You can rent shovels to dig at nearby cafes. It was very busy. Make sure to get there either two hours before or after low tide.

Be careful, you can only go there 2 hours before and 2 hours after the low tide.Very nice experience, you dig a hole and the water is really warm inside. You can jump in the sea after.Gets a little busy but you can still enjoy the hot water Springs

Absolutely amazing experience. After digging a little spa/pool, and sitting in the warm water, you can almost fall asleep, it is so enjoyable! Lots of people and you can only dig 2 hr before and after low tide. To get the best experience, don't dig directly above the hot rocks/geothermal activity, rather a little to the side to mix the hot and cold water (if you dig right above, the water is boiling hot!) Bring a shovel as well to dig faster. Definitely recommend to come here if you visit Hot Water Beach.

So funny and fun. Take a spade or rent one at one of the places. Dig a whole. Come one hour before or after the low tide. Otherwise you can't experience it. So dig a tube and lay in it. If you take a bucket too, you can ajust the two hot water with some ocean water (cool it down). Not something for the lonely nature lover. There are always crowds of people here.

If you go here, aim for slow" season. It was crazy overcrowded/cramped and the hype was a bit overdone. Finding or eventually sharing a spot to dig a hole for the hot water springs can take quite a while - considering there is such a small window around low tide

BE AWARE OF TIDE SCHEDULE!!!We came here on a stormy day and the tide was already coming up. The lifeguard warned us we wouldn't find hot water that day but we were already there with shovels (recommend bringing your own). So we had no luck finding the hot water but we did have plenty of fun digging around in the sand. We hyped ourselves up so much for one of the holes because the sand felt slightly warm and we dug a hole 5 ft deep but didn't get lucky. We ended up hitting water at the end.... but it wasn't hot!Overall, if we lived closer or had more time, we would like to give this another try. It's also a good beach just to go swimming since the beach is clean and doesn't have a lot of seashells. But definitely pick your day and time well!

A bit of a tourist trap but the premise is you can dig a pool on the beach at low tide and it will fill with hot/warm water from an underground geothermal spring. This isn't the only beach like it in NZ but it is the most well known so you'll be digging with hordes of other people but it's a bit of fun, especially with kids, to try and get a warm spot. The hot water is quite far down so the closer to the water you are the less sand you have to dig. Of course the incoming tide will make short work of any pools you've dug as it returns. Shovels can be purchased or hired at many places nearby and are somewhat essential if you're in early, otherwise you can help someone reinforce their pool for a dip as places where you can reasonably get hot water are fairly limited to two patches either side of the rocks in the middle of the beach. Hot water can be found further up the beach (and safer from the tides) but you'd have to do an almighty amount of digging to get down that far. The beach itself is notoriously treacherous so I wouldn't swim here as there are many other, safer, nicer options available in the vicinity.