Aarrghh! Networking problems with the ship and Earthlink for the last 18 hours….

The Port of Tauranga is not actually in Tuaranga, but in Mount Maunganui, so we never quite made it to Tauranga, which means “resting place for canoes” in Maori. Since we haven’t mentioned it earlier, the Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, who arrived by canoes from the Cook Islands in the 13^th century. In the grand scheme of things, however, the Maori are just a small piece of the great migration of the Polynesians from around 800 AD from Taiwan throughout the islands of the South Pacific. Note: for those of you far more knowledgeable about this migration, we know there was much disagreement about where the original Polynesians migrated from, but our authority, Scott Pearson from Stanford, who has been giving lectures on the ship, insists it’s Taiwan. Lecture over.

We climbed Mount Maunganui this morning.  It’s only 765 ft. high, but the hike to the top was only about half a mile, so it was respectably steep.  Walking from the ship, up and down the mountain and back to the ship along the beach and through town was about 3 miles. The stress-fractured foot was a little sore, but after a nap, it feels fine. The weather was cloudy in the low 60s and rain was predicted. Fortunately, the rain held off until naptime.

The first picture is the mountain as we sailed away in the ship (the sun finally came out for a good shot). As we walked along a not-very-nice beach on the way to the mountain, with people swimming and paddling surfboards in wet suits, we thought “come on NZ, can’t you give us a better beach than this?” And they delivered, as you can see in the second picture, from the top of the mountain. There was little surf, but a few beginners lying on surfboards were floating in on little waves. We understand, however, that the best surfing beaches in NZ are a little further south.

To incorporate into your little known facts to slip into cocktail party conversation. Tauranga is in the Bay of Plenty and life here revolves around the kiwifruit. This is where the bulk of that fruit is grown and ships from this port.

Half of our shipmates left us in Auckland after 3 weeks and we’re training a group of new shipmates. We’re currently trying to leave port and 3 cabins are missing…. We move on to Napier tomorrow.