After waking up from passing out at the hotel-- from exhaustion (apparently sleeping at a hotel next to a late night pub is not such a great idea) we walked around town for a bit looking to buy some souvenirs but not only does New Zealand close at 5 pm but also doesn’t open until 10 am J. After unsuccessfully purchasing anything we drove up to Tauranga through Te Puke (the kiwi fruit capital of the world) and on to Mount Maunganui (Mao Au). We decided to hike up round the mountain which took about 40 minutes and had some gorgeous views from the top of Tauranga and the Mount. I do have to say Jordan was quite the trooper given that she is still pretty nauseous all the time. Hopefully she’ll feel better after her first trimester is over.
We then headed up the Coromandel Peninsula to check out Hot Water Beach and the Cathedral Cove. We found the Hot Water Beach pretty easily and saw that we’d missed the peak time for the Hot Water (around low-tide) and would need to come back the following day around 12:30 pm. So we tried to shoot over to Cathedral Cove only to see that where the map had suggested we hike from would take us 3.5 hours there and back. Since I’d been there before I recalled we’d gotten there a different way. We quickly re-navigated to a closer entry point and had only an hour hike (round-trip). Again Jordan was great on the hike and showed a lot of gusto hiking up and down the rolling hills on the way to the beach entrance. Once again we saw some more gorgeous landscapes.
After a busy day we were scheduled to meet up with the Rush family, a family that I became very close with while I served in Whangarei as a missionary. Brent Sr. was the Bishop of one of the ward’s I served in and he and his wife Laverne helped me and my companions more than they could ever know. Since serving in NZ they had moved down to Thames where Brent purchased his first McDonald’s where his son Angus is training to be a manager. We picked up some chocolates and flowers for them and head over to their home for tea (dinner) and catching up. While a lot had changed with Brent and Laverne and their family they were still the good people I’d grown to love so much on my mission. We caught up with them until almost midnight when we had family prayers with them and parted.
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