Ain't no Mountain High Enough!

This morning we had our coffee and a bite to eat, and set off to climb Mount Maunganui, the base of which is only a 5 minute walk from where we are staying. There are two routes up, both are steep, but one is a gravel road, the other a gazillion stairs! We decided to take the road up, along with many others - there was a cruise ship in today and I’m pretty sure this was a selling feature to a lot of the passengers! The road is very well laid out, but as I said, steep incline pretty much all the way - like climbing the beginning hill at Westwood about 25 times - 😂😂. The scenery is gorgeous on the way up with amazing views over the inner Tauranga harbour and delta, as well as out over the ocean on the other side - and of course - sheep! 🐑. We made it up to the summit in about 45 minutes and of course, there were more fantastic views. We decided to take the stairs down - man, there’s a lot of them! There were lots of runners whizzing by us on their way down, and how they don’t fall is beyond me!

Came back for a shower and lunch then headed to the downtown area of Mount Manganui, which is a few streets of shops and restaurants, and hundreds of cruise ship passengers! We decided to head back and have a couple of hours in the sun by the pool. At around 4pm, we heard what sounded like a ships horn playing music, so walked down to the harbour side of the beach to see the Majestic Princess cruise ship leaving port. The “music” we had heard really was the ships horn - playing the theme song to the old TV show “Love Boat” no less - pretty cheesy but also hilarious!

Went back downtown to have some dinner, then to the beach for sunset, but it was cloudy again by that time, so not much to see. What is really cool is that lots of people gather on these beach areas for picnics, barbecues, etc., in the evening - there are even really nice stainless steel bbq’s set up along the waterfront for public use which is really nice! So tomorrow is a long driving day up north to Paihia, so we’ll be up early to get on the road for that!Read more