Mount Maunganui

The town Mount Maunganui is right beside Tauranga, undoubtedly counted in the Statistics New Zealand report saying that Tauranga's population has just surpassed Dunedin's. Both Mount Maunganui and Tauranga are built on narrow peninsulas and are surrounded by water. Mount Maunganui's peninsula has the actual mount at the end of it, and the mount is visible from far away. There's a picture of it in the blog post about kiwifruit -- the people's house where we were eating was many miles north of it and you could see it in the distance. The first slide shows Mount Maunganui from the south.

Here's a close up view from the ocean beach side.

The next two photos were taken by panning to the right from the photo above.

To put these beaches in perspective, Moung Maunganui and Tauranga are about the same latitude south as San Jose, California and Richmond, Virginia are north. The weather was perfect -- high 70s and low 80s with a breeze. Below is a photo of the mount from the bay side.

There's a trail up the mount to the top, and there's another trail, 2 miles long, around the base of the mount. Dave was told the walk around the base was very beautiful, so he took that trail. In the first photo below, you can see the trail. Then the remainder of the photos in this post show the views as he walked around the mount.