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| Mt. Maunganui is a town along the Bay of Plenty!! |
| Glenn's Journal 01-05-03 & 01-06-03 New Zealand Sunday morning and the day starts off a little gloomy and gray. The weatherman says that a rain storm is moving in but we are hoping for the best. After breakfast we prepared lunches and packed a day pack and headed over to Mt. Maunganui. We stopped into town to check e-mails and accomodation for the next few nights. We spent over an hour checking and responding to e-mails and even booked our Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb for January 30th. We are excited about it!! As for accomodation we thought we would try Servas (Hosting organization) but after going 0 for 7 with any hosts that were interested we finally gave up. We drove through town and ended up stopping into the Backpackers nearest the information center and they had availability for Monday and Tuesday nights. We booked a double room for the two night. Now we were ready to head to Mt. Maunganui. We drove over the brisge to Mt. Maunganui, through town, and made our way to the beach along the west part of town. The day was cool and comfortable with a slight overcast but nice enough to sit at the beach. We had lunch and relaxed while people watching before I got restless and decided that we should take the hike around the mountain. The hike provided some beautiful scenery as we spent almost an hour hiking, while stopping occassionally to take photos. After the hike we returned to the car and headed back to our hotel room. Before dinner I took the time to go for a swim at the pool while Erin relaxed in the room. She started to prepare dinner as dinner was almost ready when I returned. Tonight dinner was pasta with meat sauce and a salad. Again wonderfully prepared and I appreciated a home cooked meal. After dinner we watched a movie while we cuddled on the "couch". We didn't stay up too late as we had plans on taking a "swimming with the dolphins tour" in the morning and had to be there by 8:45 am to load onto the boat. It should be a fun day!!! 01-06-03 New Zealand We awoke to a rainy and very overcast day. We got up early enough to call the Tauranga Dolphin Company to see if the boat would go today. They confirmed that they had cancelled the boat for the day so we added our name on to tomorrows list. We were told to call back later tonight to confirm the weather. This gave us a chance to sleep in a little and listen to the rain drops on the roof. We still ha to check out by 10:00 am as we were relocating to the backpackers in town. After packing out things we headed out towards Whakatane, a beach community about 80 kilometers south of Taurunga. The drive was pleasant as we hoped for nicer weather later in the day. Once in Whakatane we stopped into Information and picked up a few brochures relating to the whole area including one on Taupo. We sat on the park benches overlooking the bay while we enjoyed lunch. It wasn't raining here but it was still very overcast. After lunch we found a little park along the water front where we pulled out the sarong and took turns napping and reading our books for the remainder of the afternoon. The overcast day still provided Erin and I with a light sunburn as we had not used suntan lotion this morning. We headed back to Taurunga around 3:30 pm so we could check into our hostel before it was too late. We checked into the hostel around 5:00 pm and then headed out for dinner and the internet cafe. We had dinner at an Irish pub which included a steak for me and a Cajun Chicken Burger for Erin. We spent a few hours at the internet cafe with Erin working on some more photo pages and I checked e-mails, fixed a few problems with the website, and did some future research. We returned to the hostel around 10:00 pm where we retired pretty early. We will hope for better weahter tomorow so we can go "swimming with the dolphins". We were to call again in the morning to comfirm but everything looked good weather wise. Yeah!!! |