Hello! Happy 2019! It's been way too long since I last posted, I know. December was a busy month here, with the end of the school year, the Christmas holiday and the start of summer break all rolled into one. But now that we're firmly in January and the new year, I should have a bit more time to keep you all updated on life in NZ!
Shane headed back to work today after a full two-week break over the holidays. One of the really nice things about living in New Zealand is that most workplaces shut down over the Christmas/New Year period. Businesses encourage or even require employees to take a long leave over those two weeks. Shane's entire office closed for the holidays, and the 6 days of leave he took -- combined with public holidays and weekends -- resulted in 16 wonderful days off.
(To compare, Shane and I often worked Christmas Eve AND the day after Christmas in America in an effort to save our 10 TOTAL vacation days for the year. So our Christmas holiday would usually consist of Christmas day. I like the NZ system much better!)
We made the most of Shane's time off with a trip to the Bay of Plenty on the North Island's east coast. We weren't planning on traveling in December as we pretty much maxed out our travel budget for the year. (2018 took us to Queenstown, Rotorua, Australia and more) But my wonderful friend's wonderful sister offered us a place to stay -- for free -- in the town of Whakatane.
Whakatane (pronounced fawk-a-tawny) is about a 4-hour drive to the south east of Auckland. It's a small town surrounded by farms on the Pacific Ocean. The town holds a lot of meaning for the Maori population, and there are some interesting historical sites to explore. But we went for the beach, of course. And the beaches are GOOD.
Meet Ohope Beach, possibly my new favorite of all time.
Ohope is a small beach town just up the road from Whakatane. The beach is a beautiful white sand masterpiece that stretches as far as you can see. The waves were just big enough for our kids and my friend's two boys to practice their boogie boarding without making any moms nervous. And the water was just warm enough to invite us all in. It was a great place to spend a few days.
On the horizon here is Whale Island, an uninhabited island that's home to a number of endangered NZ plants and birds. And barely visible when the clouds lift is White Island, NZ's only active marine volcano. Tours depart from Whakatane by boat and helicopter, taking visitors -- who must wear gas masks -- to explore the active volcano. It seems like quite an adventure, but not one our kids are ready for ;)
Also in the Bay of Plenty is the city of Tauranga, the 5th largest city in NZ. Tauranga hosted Cardi B last week for a concert (this was very exciting news to me!), and is home to the famous Mount Maunganui. We took a day to explore the area, which is about an hour north of Whakatane.
Mount Maunganui turned out to be the most American-ish (i.e., crowded) beach we've been to in New Zealand. It's beautiful, of course, and offers a pretty intense hike up the Mount. Shane made it about halfway up before deciding to save it for another day. (The boy was just starting to get a cold that infected the rest of us over the next week, so the kids and I stayed in the surf.)
The best part of Mount Maunganui for us was the Mexican restaurant, The Barrio Brothers. Here we enjoyed real live Mexican food for the first time in a loooong time. Paying the bill, Shane told the employees they served the best Mexican food in New Zealand, and they said, "We know. New Zealand doesn't know how to do Mexican food." Ha!
So that's a look at our time in the Bay of Plenty, one of NZ's more popular tourist regions. I have a feeling we'll be back here, at least for the Mexican food ;)
