Yellow Fish cruises: Day 67: Tauranga

We’ve decided that we love these New Zealand itineraries. They offer such a variety of experiences, all of them within walking distance of the ship or a short shuttle/bus ride away. These are very cruiser-friendly cruises. And so it was again today, where we had a plethora of options available to us for ways to spend our time in Tauranga. Actually, the ship docks in the town of Mount Maunganui, next to Tauranga, and we had a very full day without ever going into Tauranga.

We set an alarm and were at breakfast in the DaVinci Dining Room when it opened at 7am. The Ruby Princess had already been at its berth and cleared for passengers to go ashore, but we lingered over breakfast, planning our day. We intended to do a long walk along the beach on the ocean side of the peninsula connecting the dormant volcano Mt. Maunganui to Tauranga, and then walk back in the boardwalk along Pilot Bay, on the harbor side.

Day 9 breakfast menu

On our way off the ship, we could see that the decorators were on board today, putting up Christmas decorations. Yay! We had thought we might get them tomorrow in Auckland or on our next Sydney turnaround, but we returned to the ship this afternoon to find it totally decorated.

Exciting!!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Laying out the garland before it gets positioned

The weather was perfect today, low 70s and sunny, though the visibility was affected by haze from the bushfires in Australia. We walked on the boardwalk along Pilot Bay until we reached a cross street over to the ocean side. Once there, we walked down the beach out to Moturiki Island, connected to the mainland by a land bridge. In all the times we’ve been here in the past, we had never walked out to Moturiki Island and that was on the agenda for today. .

A beautiful day in Maunganui

overlooking Pilot Bay

The boardwalk along Pilot Bay

Maunganui Beach (on the ocean side)

Looking out to Moturiki Island

Maunganui Beach runs southeast for miles

We spent about an hour hiking all over Moturiki Island, climbing down rocks to reach the various tiny beaches tucked around the island. The views in all directions were gorgeous, and this being a beautiful spring weekend, the beaches had more people on them than we’d ever seen before, participating in all sorts of water sports.

Path in Moturiki Reserve

You should have seen us needing to help each other climb up and down these rocks.

When did we get old?

Motuotau Island

Looking back at Mt. Maunganui

Looking southeast

This path on the mountain goes around the base of it.

Since we climbed the mountain two years ago, we want to do this yet this this season.

We eventually made our way back to the mainland, and walked out toward Mt. Maunganui and back to the ship via the boardwalk along Pilot Bay with its beach. On our way, we contracted with a water sports rental place to rent a 16’ Hobie Cat catamaran this afternoon. We were pretty good at sailing Hobie Cats 20 years ago, and, forgetting that we also used to be pretty skilled at scaling large rocks but seem to have lost that ability, we thought we’d still remember how to sail. Busy Pilot Bay, two cruise ships, freighters, lots of water traffic, a shipping channel, fussy tides, currents and winds...what could possibly go wrong?

The Pohutukawa tree (New Zealand Christmas tree)

We returned to the ship to grab a quick lunch in the Horizon Court Buffet and changed into quick dry bright yellow rash guards, board shorts and Teva sandals, slapped on more sunscreen and headed back out. And if you had been watching the ship’s bridge cam about 9pm EST Friday night, you would have seen Yellow Fish and Yellow Shirt criss-crossing the bay. I only took one photo on the catamaran and then tucked my camera away in a zip lock bag. We weren’t very good at predicting large splashes nor avoiding them and I didn’t want to tempt fate.

We sailed over to Matakana Island with its long stretch of sandy white beach. There were several small boats anchored offshore, and dozens of day trippers using the beach. We didn’t have time to linger, but kept moving. We successfully tacked and managed to avoid knocking ourselves off or tipping the Hobie Cat over. Our most exciting moment came when we had to maneuver between a German freighter and a large sand bar, but we didn’t run aground. The afternoon was a success.

Our sailing adventure

Our approximate course.

Very approximate. ;-)

We finally got the camera out for photos after we were back on shore.

We returned to the ship about 4:30pm and had to quickly shower and get to dinner by 5:15pm. I had had New Zealand currency zipped in my back shorts pocket, and, although it’s a curious mix of plastic and paper it was drenched and needed to be hung up to dry. We look like counterfeiters in here tonight.

We were pretty worn out at dinner, having walked 16000 steps, mostly by noon and then manhandling a sailboat for an hour, but we still managed to get to the 7:30pm production show Once Upon a Dream. But that was as long as we lasted. We have two more port days on this New Zealand itinerary, and then two days to sleep cruising back to Sydney.