Australia-New Zealand 1

Australia-New Zealand 9

Oct. 22, 2025,

Hi Everyone,

It’a amazing, that when you are travelling, you can have good days, better days and fabulous days with only the occasion blip. Today, after breakfast, I elected to do a walking day to give my 9 hour, motorcycle bum a rest. I walked down from my hotel to the waterfront, passing through the town. Tauranga is a lovely town, doubling as a beach resort and a large industrial port. The downtown area has the usual amount of shops with a number of them specializing in hiking and sporting equipment. I did a lot of browsing but no purchasing, responding to the sales people that I was only a tourist vacationing.

I found myself at the waterfront overlooking an old railway bridge which took me across the bay. The bridge had a walking lane used by hikers, runners and bicyclists. It was 800 meters long. I walked across and found myself on a road that followed the beach on the other side. I walked for an hour and eventually a car stopped to ask me if I was lost and could she give me a lift. Her mother was in the back seat and was probably about my age. I told her that I was from Canada and that I had just completed a triathlon as she had notice the number tatoued on my arm. She drove me a few kms to the local bus station. She explained to me that she was of Mauri origin. The Mauris are the original settlers here, arriving from Polynesia several hundred years before the white man. Mauri culture is very evident here as many of the villages and mountains are in Mauri language and are unpronounceable and difficult for me to memorize. There are only 5 million people in all of NZ, many of whom are Mauri. On the bus, the stations are announced in Mauri and English. We could take a lesson from them in Quebec. Our native Indian culture is visibly lost in our everyday lives.

The bus took me to Mount Maunganui and the bus driver asked me politely if I was going to hike up the mountain. When I acknowledged that was what I was here to do, he responded ‘that is what I figured.’ I took that as a compliment as I guess that he also had seen my tatous. I had a cappuccino and muffin for lunch and spoke with a young couple from Italy, travelling around and working as cooks. I suggested to the young lady, Noel that they might find work in Whistler as they were quite interested in the fact that I was from Canada.

I asked the waitress about how long it would take me to climb the 300m mountain. She looked at me and suggested that I try the climb tomorrow as I had just consumed 1 muffin and 2 cappuchinos. I started up the mountain and asked a few young people if I could climb up the mountain in 1 hour or so. They politely smiled. There were several paths to take, longer with a gentle slope or shorter but steeper. I took the latter to go up and the former to walk down. On my way back I spoke to a young fellow who lived here and then with an Estonian waiter who is a sea captain. You meet so many people when you travel alone.

All of the pictures below were taken in Tauranga and on Mount Maunganui.

Love,

Brian