Every day that I’ve ever spent in Mount Maunganui I’ve had pretty much the same routine. I suppose it would eventually get boring, but I think it would take a long time. I start with a walk across the street to pick up our morning lattes at The General, then back to the room for breakfast and lattes while working on our morning puzzles. Add in a bit of “nothing much” and a touch of “relaxing” and it’s pretty easy to get to 11:00 AM before we are ready to start a full day enjoying the sun and the sand. This is very different than your experience if you are on a cruise ship. When Jan was shopping yesterday she was asked if she was in town on a cruise ship – she said no, we were here for three days and had been driving all around New Zealand. We enjoy that way much better. Here is where the cruise ships dock.

The first activity on a typical day in Mount Maunganui (after lattes and relaxing) is to walk up the Mount. Jan fully resolved her “summer wardrobe deficit” yesterday, so she joined me on the walk. The good news is that it is warm and sunny here. The bad news is that if you are walking up a mountain in the sun, it gets downright hot.

Jan decided that sheep are far smarter than we give them credit for. They were all relaxing in the shade.

So when we spotted a bench in the shade…

Then it was onward and upward. I kept saying “I think it flattens out around the next corner” but of course it never did. Finally we came to a fork in the road.

Here is a closeup of the options.

Option 1 was to go back the way we came, down 1030 meters of steep path, mostly in the sun. Option 2 was to continue upward for 830 meters on a steep path. Option 3 was to go 430 meters down a steep path, in the shade, and then walk around the base of the Mount – mostly flat and partly shaded. Jan wisely went for option 3. I foolishly continued to the top.

The scenery was lovely, but the sky was clear and there wasn’t much shade. But there was a breeze, and that brought out the paragliders.

Unfortunately there weren’t any tandem paragliders, or I would have been tempted to try it again. I pressed on and eventually I made it to the top, and to prove it I took a picture of the monument.

Then it was down to meet Jan as she was walking around the base. I almost missed her when she went off the path to explore.

It was getting late and we were hungry, so we headed back to the hotel for lunch and a little nap.

Then I went for a long walk (2.5 km each way) along the beach, barefoot through the surf. It is quite windy today and the breakers were impressive. I would have loved to take pictures, but yesterday when I went a bit too close to the water, my iPhone got wet. It’s waterproof so I didn’t worry about it, but when I plugged it in to recharge it gave me a warning that water had been detected, and I should let it dry first – a process that might take several hours. It did dry out eventually, but I decided my phone would stay home today, so no pictures of the surf. But you know what it looks like, right?

Tomorrow we head up into the Coromandel.