Today was our 10th and last day of our cruise. Our ship docked at the Port of Tauranga early morning. Jerlene and Javier once again disembarked with us because the staff at Adventure Ocean agreed to give them another prize if they took a few more selfies in town. :-)
The weather in the morning was pretty cloudy but it should get clearer later in the day.
Unlike all the other ports that we had visited, after we disembarked from the ship, we could walk right out of the port to the town, without the need to take a shuttle bus. First we came to a nice little Coronation Park. Jerlene and Javier started on their "mission" right away.
From the park, we could see our cruise ship at a distance.
As we walked down the street, we could see Tsunami Evacuation Route signs on every other lamp posts.
There were also signboards along the way providing useful information in the event of an earthquake and potential Tsunami.
Before visiting the town centre, we decided to make a turn to the beach.
This is the famous Mount Maunganui surf beach and it's quite a long stretch. The part where we went was not so crowded with people, which was great!
The photo above reminds me of the Microsoft Windows 10 wallpaper below. :-)
Known for its fantastic waves and golden sand, this stretch of stunning beach hosts everything from surf-lifesaving events to beach volleyball and sand castle building.
While we were enjoying at the beach, two little dogs ran to us and tried to play with Jerlene and Javier. One of them even wanted a selfie with Javier!
We spent about 45 mins playing and enjoying the breeze at the beach.
It's now time to explore the town. Tauranga is the largest city in the Bay of Plenty and one of the fastest growing population centres in the country. In the Maori language, Tauranga means "a resting place for canoes". Centuries ago some of the first Maori settlers sailed to New Zealand and landed here on these very shores. The Maori named the town before it was even a town, but Bay of Plenty came from the mind of Captain Cook. He arrived in 1769 and found several native settlements and an abundance of food. Flax traders and missionaries soon followed his lead, yet were disrupted by a series of tribal wars. Once everything settled down, the Europeans started arriving by the numbers and the town of Tauranga grew quickly.
Downtown Tauranga has several historically significant areas to view during a scenic walk around the area.
Jerlene and Javier were at work again in the town. Their "mission" yesterday earned them a medal each from Adventure Ocean. Today their "mission" required them to take selfie with the medal.
At the end of the street, we came to a small hill which we decided to explore by climbing up the path.
Before taking on the proper path to the summit, we saw a tiny "cave" on the hill which we went up to take a look.
We then took the stairs up to the summit of Mount Drury.
As we were almost at the summit, we started to have a superb view of the town and harbour.
We reached the summit within 10-15 minutes. The climb was a little bit tiring but satisfying.
At the summit, we had a spectacular view of Mount Maunganui.
At the foot of the hill, we came to a playground where Jerlene and Javier had lots of fun. We spent close to an hour here before taking a stroll back to the harbour.
While we were walking back to our ship along the shore, Jerlene suddenly realized her phone, which was hanging on her neck, was lost. We were quite panic and wanted to back track all the way to the playground initially. Fortunately I had been taking photos along the way and in one of the photos taken about 10 minutes ago, Jerlene still had the phone with her. So she must have dropped it along the shore. We quickly back tracked by the shore and found it not far away. What an adventure!
At the harbour, we had a perfect view of Mount Maunganui, an extinct 232-m volcanic cone and sacred Maori site.
That's all for our visit to Tauranga downtown and it's time to go back to our amazing ship!
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