Mt. Maunganui and Disappointment

Mt. Maunganui

The day after the two-day tramp, I went to Mt. Maunganui with McKenzie and her host mum, Darnie. We had a rockin' good time together. Darnie has been so good to take the two of us around the north island.

Representing my Aggies at Mt. Maunganui

We did quite a bit of shopping before heading to the beach. On our way to go shopping we were about to walk past a construction site. A large crane was lifting an enormous bin of scraps up to a high rise hotel. Right as we were about to walk under Darnie said, "How crazy would it be if that were to suddenly fall?" As soon as she finished that sentence, one of the clips on the chains snapped loose from the bin creating a terrible noise. The three of us screamed a little bit and waited for the bin to land on the building before walking below. Pretty crazy.

We wandered in and out of quite a few stores and found some wonderful things. My favorite purchase of the day was a new pair of Roxy board shorts on sale for FORTY-NINE NEW ZEALAND DOLLARS! That's a steal because that's only twenty-five American dollars, for a pair of Roxy board shorts! I was pretty excited about it.

My favorite purchase

After shopping and lunch at a local pizzeria, we headed to the beach. It was a gorgeous morning as we wandered from store to store but by the time we put our suits on, it had clouded over a little bit. McKenzie and I were the brave ones who changed into our suits while Darnie sat fully clothed on the beach.

Me, McKenzie, and Darnie

Darnie was kind enough to take a few pictures for us. Needless to say, the water was pretty cold. I wanted to be daring and go all the way under, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. We only got wet up to our waists.

Our initial reactions

The water was cold enough that we each did a little dance as the water got higher on our bodies

McKenzie posing with Mt. Maunganui in the background

It was a beautiful beach

After our little swim we got delicious ice cream in homemade waffle cones and headed back to Hamilton to quickly shower for the Hot Air Balloon Night Glow.

What is the Night Glow? Every April in Hamilton they have a hot air balloon festival. I don't know a whole lot about it but I do know that throughout the week you can see lots of air balloons floating through the sky on your way to school. One particular day, the sky was quite full and I was able to snap a few shots before I had to leave.

On the last day of the festival, they light up the balloons at night. It's a really big deal and tons of people show up. I would say it's about as big as the fireworks show in Idaho Falls on the Fourth of July. So we rushed back from Mt. Maunganui so that we would have time to shower and get cleaned up. We raced into town, found a parking space, and ran to the field only to discover that we missed the light up. We thought the light up was at 8:30 but they ended up doing it earlier. So we missed the night glow and we walked back to the car very disappointed.

I have never been in a hot air balloon before and all week I was hoping I would get the chance. It didn't happen so I have added a hot air balloon ride to my list of things I want to do someday.