Saturday 27th to Sunday 28th October – Trip to Mount Maunganui

Saturday 27^th October – Shihad Gig

Our new neighbour - thrush - hopefully better luck the second time?

Last night went on later than planned. So after a lay-in, the gym and cleaning the house for the Edwards to stay in, we left later than planned.  It was only just over two-hours’ drive to Mount Maunganui. I reminded Simon that we had been there for a day out during our camper adventure at the end of January.  In fact, it was where we headed for a swim and to focus on doing some planning for the North Island, which we had failed to do up to that point! It was nice to have a reason to head back and spend some more time there, albeit the weather was nowhere near as warm as in January.

We checked into the Mission Belle Motel where we discovered that our room had an amazing view of the Mount itself (right). 

It was nearly 5pm by this time and the doors for the night’s gig were opening at 6pm – we went straight out as we needed to squeeze in some dinner and beers before then!  We caught an Uber to the Rising Tide which is the home of Mount Brewing co.  A perfect opportunity to order a taster tray to decide on our favourite tipple to continue the evening with.

This consisted of trawling through a very extensive list of brews (below), reading out their description and writing the number of our chosen drink on a taster tray. And voila! The appropriate five tiny glasses were delivered (left). 

The honey hussy was my favourite!

We also had tasty burgers for dinner and felt so comfortable that we enjoyed the 1^sthalf of the All Blacks Vs Wallabies whilst enjoying a couple of larger glasses of our favourites.

A good atmosphere brewing before the main band of the night...

Maybe we should’ve budged sooner. By the time we walked over to the arena Kora were already in full swing, meaning that we had missed the first band, Villainy, completely!  Kora were brilliant. The lead singer has an amazing voice and they have a kind of ska/funk vibe to their songs which makes them great live.  We were happy to find that Mount Brewing Co were supplying the beer to the event so we could continue where we had started. We managed to bag a spot right in front of the sound desk for the main band of the evening, Shihad.  This was the last night of their thirtieth anniversary reunion tour. They get played a lot on the Rock so we knew a few of their tracks

Shihad

They played pretty varied stuff because over the thirty years their albums have gone from what would probably be described as soft rock to a heavy grunge sound. There was a good atmosphere and we enjoyed hearing our favourite tracks. Taking a sneaky look outside, we saw that as predicted, the heavens had opened. We booked an Uber and made a dash for it before the rest of the masses also decided to leave.  We got the cab to drop us back in town for more beers and people watching, which was more entertaining than usual due to Halloween fancy dress efforts.

Mount Maunganui looms in the background...

Sunday 28^th October – Mount Maunganui

Thankfully, last night’s rain had been blown away and we woke to a nice day. Checking out of our motel, we parked as near as we could to climb the mount (right).

Now that looks like a good beach-side campsite

Yellowhammer

It was estimated to take an hour to climb, but even doing it at Simon’s pace we reached the summit in 45 minutes.



I was very proud of us both.

There were loads of tuis, yellowhammers and lots of other birdlife on the mountain.

A tui reaching for some nectar

Stunning view from the summit

Someone even took their own paragliding gear on the climb with them before throwing themselves off the summit:

View of Matakana Island from the north western side of the summit

View down to the road where we'd left the car and the hot pools for our recovery!

We took it easy on the way back, getting views from all sides of the mount as we corkscrewed our way downwards.  We strolled onto the seafront for a well-deserved brunch. Still feeling very full, we treated ourselves to a relaxing dip in the hot pools we’d seen earlier from the mountain side (right).

Mount Maunganui main beach

We’d had such a lovely 24 hours there, and all only just over two hours away. We took the long route home, but I think we’d enjoyed better scenery on the more direct route over on Saturday. The trouble with having such a good weekend? The time disappeared really fast and we both found ourselves suffering from Sunday night blues…..