Mt Maunganui

Thursday, 19 January 2012

Today we punished the kids for having such a great time yesterday by forcing them to walk up Mt Maunganui (you can see in the photo how happy they were about that) which is a high hill overlooking the merged towns of Mt Maunganui, Tauranga and Paloma and the rest of the Bay of Plenty which is pretty amazing beach and bay wise. It does have a dirty great (and I mean HUGE) port shipping out wood and everything else from the many plantation  pine areas around the  place  (oh and the stricken Rena is out to sea somewhere too but we can't see it).The beaches around here are amazing and they stretch for miles and miles - if I was a surfer who wanted space, I'd come to NZ for sure - also apparently no-one has ever been eaten by a shark in NZ so that would be a bonus.   Mt Maunganui would probably be a fine place to live, but as a tourist destination the hustle and bustle was a bit of a shock to the system after our BCV..