Pacific passtime

We're now in Touranga, a beautiful coastal resort city on the east coast of NZ with a dramatic sea mount at the end of a peninsula forming part of the city's complex of inlets and bays. Barry has a cousin Keith who lives here and showed us around the city this morning. We went to see the sea mount (Mt. Manganui) walked around it on a nice trail, but infortunately, didn't walk up it. Keith is a bit over weight and didn't feel fit enough for the walk up. We ended up driving around the city instead. Oh well, we can't do everything - another reason to return.

Tomorrow (Saturday) we head back to Auckland to catch the plane for Sydney on Sunday. NZ is definitely a great place for a holiday, but I wouldn't want to live here. It's expensive and too far from the rest of the world, for starters. Also, NZ bread sucks, the beer is OK but not better than Canuck beer and not as good as Belgian for example, and ... well I could go on, but why? I have to leave some complaints for my next trip to NZ. There will be one.