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| Just another beautiful New Zealand landscape! |
Took it nice and slow this morning as we packed up to leave Auckland and drive south to Tauranga, where we will stay for the next three nights. It was a Sunday morning so we knew traffic would be light as we drove through the city, and it was. (As a side note, during this drive I knew that BSU was playing TCU, and we stopped at a couple of i Sites -great New Zealand rest stops, with gas stations, restaurants, Wi-Fi, etc. Awesome! - And in addition to stopping at these spots to “watch” the game on the web, I was also getting text message score updates from both Ryan and Wayne. Good thing the drive was so beautiful, because the final score wasn’t. L )
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| A View from the Passenger's Seat |
Anyway, the drive was once again beautiful. At first after passing downtown we were driving through some suburbs on the freeway. And soon enough, we were in a rural landscape again driving on the Motorway (a 4 lane highway – very nice.) And the landscape was as green as green could be, with a blue sky and puffy white cloud above. We were able to enjoy this kind of scenery the remaining way (almost 3 hours) to Tauranga.
As we were approaching Tauranga (a small port city) we drove through this incredibly lush, fern-palm canyon and then onto a sloping plain, filled with kiwi farms, overlooking the ocean and Tauranga in the distance.
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| Just one of many Kiwi Farms, sheltered by very tall hedges |
Our trusty GPS steered us through town right to our apartment, which is located on Marine Parade – a street right on the beach. The place is great – a one bedroom, contemporarily furnished condo. And the beach we are on is beautiful – it’s a very long stretch of fairly quiet beach, again with a grass area between the street and the sand. Further to the south is a stretch of coffee shops and restaurants, where there are more crowds.
After we unpacked, we drove down to the south end, where Mount Maunganui stands watch on Tauranga and the harbor – a beautiful extinct but lush volcano. We then hiked around the entire base of the mountain, which took us about an hour, but afforded us some great views.
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| Tauranga Beach viewed from the beginning of our Mount Maunganui Hike |
We then decided to go to the store, stock up on some basic groceries, and also barbeque some hamburgers for the evening. And Joanie made them delicious – with blue cheese, roasted potatoes on the side and a delicious salad. And of course, we had some wine left over from Omata to accompany our dinner. We then whiled away the rest of the evening, and slept really well on what turned out to be a very comfortable bed.
