South to the Bay of Plenty

Today we drove south and east from Auckland to the Bay of Plenty region, the fruitbowl of New Zealand.  So far we've only purchased some NZ apples, but no kiwifruit yet!  We'll sample some soon, we promise!  Our destination was the city of Tauranga, where I was planning to go on a dolphin swimming, whale watching excursion into the bay on Saturday morning.  Sadly, because of expected rain and wind tomorrow, found out this evening that it is cancelled.  I'm very disappointed but hoping that we'll be able to catch up with those dolphins in some other part of NZ later on in the trip.  There are several places you can do it, on both the North and South Island.

View from summit of Mt Maunganui

The drive to Tauranga showed us the pretty rolling farmland and countryside of NZ.  It's so green here it's a nice change from the browns and whites of the scenery in Calgary.  Also, we stopped at another beautiful beach in Waihia, a little northwest of Tauranga.  Hardly anyone at this beach, but it had the same soft blackish sand we saw in Piha yesterday.  If it was a little warmer today, would have loved to go swimming here.  The beaches we've seen so far in NZ rival those of any we've seen on our vacations, including Hawaii and Mexico.

Barry on Mt Maunganui

In late afternoon, we hiked up to the summit of Mt Maunganui ("large mountain"), right near Tauranga.  This was our Stairmaster, Part Deux (if you read yesterday's post).  Known by Maori as Mauao, it is a spiritual place for them and very sacred.  No development is allowed on the mountain.