Tauranga

In the evening of February 24th, Sarah and I made our way to Tauranga. There we stayed in a mega great hostel, right at the harbor, with a rooftop terrace including a beautiful view over the sea. 
For Saturday morning we had booked a two-hour surf course - which we stupidly arrived an hour early for, because we somehow didn't read the confirmation email correctly. However, the beach there was soooo beautiful that we could easily pass the time for that one hour. 
The surfing itself was a lot of fun, but also damn exhausting - we both managed to stand up (only for about one second, but still!). However, we won't become professional surfers, haha.
After the course, we drove back to the hostel, ate and then walked to Mount Maunganui to watch the sunset. After the exhausting surfing, the little hike uphill was even more exhausting, but it was definitely worth it! From the top, we had a beautiful view of the city (Tauranga), the sea and of course the sunset. 

The next day, everything was really sore - which is understandable after surfing and hiking. That's why we didn't do sooo much on Sunday. We just went to the beach (and both got quite sunburned afterwards) and chilled out there or went for a little swim :-)
In the afternoon, we drove to the McLaren Falls - these are waterfalls in the middle of the forest, where you can swim really well. It wasn't particularly touristy, there were mostly locals there - which was actually pretty cool.
In the evening, we drove back towards Auckland and stopped at the huge L&P bottle in Paeora haha. L&P is a soft drink produced in New Zealand - it's something similar to Sprite, but more lemony and better :-)
Tauranga was definitely beautiful and maybe I'll even go there again during my time here!! If I were to live in New Zealand forever (which I don't think I could), I would move there! :-)

This weekend (March 10th to 12th) we actually wanted to do the Tongariro Crossing, but unfortunately that literally fell into the water. Now we hope that the weather will be better in two weeks and that we can do it then.

Best regards to home ♥