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Move day! Off to the north island and sad to leave queenstown following such a good week. We packed up and arrived at queenstwon airport via the lovely town of frankton and the bp garage we passed many times that week ready to fly to Auckland.
The jet air flight was ready and waiting and queenstown was a lovely scenic airport. Unlike Auckland! Grey, rainy and not very pretty we were starting to wonder why we moved!
Finding the car park rental place took rather a while mainly due to us not reading the emails we were sent but we found it eventually and the lovely Karil looked after us... Eventually. Still rainy we set off and got promptly lost in the traffic! People and traffic was proving stressful and mixed with a stupid map I got a little stressed navigating but we got there eventually and were back on route 1 heading east. Along the way went through a town called Bethlehem, but no sight of baby Jesus.
The road out to mount Mounganui, our Christmas destination was slow in places but got prettier as we went. After a brief stop at the lovely four square to stock up on food for the weekend, we arrived at tauranga. A scenic route in we admired the many warehouses, cargo and busy working harbour but followed the mount in the hope that it would get better!
It did. Thankfully. And soon we were cruising down the beach front taking it in. We found the high street and promptly hired some surf boards with karil's words ringing in our ears... Sharks, bay closed, 3m long! Great! The crazy surf lady added some extra joy by mentioning jellyfish- yay!
Rob walked his 10ft banana board to the apartment and we found our home for Christmas. The grotto was a rather lovely serviced apartment with kitchen, lounge and DVD player so we could watch our adventure DVDs! It opened onto the pool area and Had a hot tub. Excellent. Also a complimentary edition of the local rag, Bay of Plenty News - the headline was SHARK SCARE. Turns out our local beach was evacuated after a 2m Mako shark was spotted the day before we arrived - surfing was very quickly looking less appealing, but on the upside a Great White hadn't been seen since Nov 11th....
We wandered out to find some food and the mission for the liqor store began. After walking up and down the whole town we found one back near the apartment and I promptly got id'd. V amusing as I seem to be getting younger with age. Rob took umbridge at not being asked. Hee hee.
In a quandary over dinner we found a rather fab looking Chinese buffet. Christmas eve dinner was sorted. We promptly stuffed our faces full. Nice change from the NZ burger diet and it went down a storm.
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