Sunday, November 28, 2010

Digital Postcard: Mount Maunganui


Before I came to NZ, quite a few people recommended we visit Mount Maunganui. Then we were sitting in the library in Hamilton and mentioned to a patron sitting by us that we had liked Raglan. Her response was "Disgusting. If you want to see real beaches go to Mount Maunganui." We had other plans but decided on a whim to go to there and we were not disappointed.

We slept in our car for the first couple of days. Check out the amazing tarp work we did to keep our sleeping quarters private:


Our plan is to keep everything looking pretty ghetto to deter anyone from thinking we have anything of value in our car. The tarp is effective for this.

When we went to church we had three dinner invites and two places to stay. Everyone here is amazingly nice. The first couple we stayed with were really funny PLUS he is building a helicopter in his garage. Yep. Like the ones in MASH. He has the glass bubble and everything. Then we stayed with the stake president and his house full of family and everyone else. He was from the US and we had Thanksgiving dinner with them. I wanted to get a Turkey Bowl game together and though we had enough people, no one was into it. We played some catching game involving two rugby balls and a funny game called Chicken Goggles which I won. Or at least I made it so I was one of the winners because during the game when someone got out everyone chanted "out! out! out!" so when there was some confusion about who messed up I just chanted the other girl out. That is how you win games.


Archie emailed me about some climbs he had seen on the Mount. We were excited about doing them but it took us climbing it like three times before we finally found them. It was really cool and everything, climbing right above the ocean, and then WE SAW ORCA WHALES!!! For real! It was pretty exciting. We were really high up so they weren't very big, but some guys walking by confirmed that they were whales. And then we saw a picture of them on the front page of their newspaper. It was too far away for me to get a picture, but that really made my whole visit. I still often say, "and then we saw ORCA WHALES!!!!" Love it.





Mount Maunganui = beautiful.

6 comments:

The Payne family said...

Wow, that really is beautiful. And remember that time when you saw Orca whales? Yeah that was cool.

Christy said...

That sheep/beach picture is kind of trippy...

Tif said...

Postcard #2 is wonderful! I am collecting them :)

I'd just like to let you know that its official I'm getting pretty jealous. Your adventures look so great!

Becky Pitcher said...

Hi, I am Amalia's friend who you don't know.
BUT Thanks for writing so much! I love hearing about your trip and seeing all your fun pictures! It looks like you're having a blast.

Julie said...

Gah! This is too pretty for words!

drew said...

Its quite cozy in the tarped car. Good thing you are missing a rib so you don't take up as much space...