Tauranga / Mount Maunganui

Our stop for the day was labeled Rotorua, but Rotorua is some forty miles inland, so the stop was really in Tauranga. To be even more specific, it was in Mount Maunganui, a small town along the coast. While traveling to Rotorua was an option we had decided to pass on that. We didn’t see a whole lot of options for activities in Tauranga / Mount Maunganui, so we let the boys sleep in as we figured we’d play it by ear. It was raining pretty steadily in the morning but had let up by 10:00 when we headed off the ship. Our plan was to walk around the base of the eponymous Mount Maunganui, a hill that sits at the head of the harbor.

It was still sprinkling as we left, but not enough to cause any trouble. We walked along the beach to the trail, where we spotted a few interesting birds: a sacred kingfisher, a Pacific reef egret, and a song thrush. The trail quickly became very beautiful, giving good views of the harbor and then the open ocean. It was a great combination of a forest trail and a rocky coast.

At the end of the trail we popped into a pizza place called Rustica where the boys shared a cheese pizza and Liz and I each had a veggie pizzanini, a sandwich made with pizza crust that was delicious. After lunch we walked through the town, with a quick stop at a playground along the way, and back to the ship. It wound up being a delightful day in town.

Once we were back the boys got some video game time while I went downstairs to go over our account statement, which had become pretty confusing. It was only after spending time with both the purser and destination services that I understood how the excursions that were part of our package were handled in the case of cancelations. It’s all rather opaque, with the main lesson I learned being that they really don’t want you cashing in one type of balance, say for an excursion, for another, say onboard credit for services. I suppose there’s some reason for that, but it wasn’t clear to me going in. Caveat emptor, I suppose. I also didn’t like getting bounced from reception to destination services. I feel that if you’re labeling yourself as a luxury brand you should take ownership of my problem. Don’t push it back on me to figure out who I’m supposed to talk to. Nobody wants to play accountant when they’re on the trip of a lifetime.

We were early to bed as we wanted to get up early and get after Auckland the next day.Read more