Papamoa & Tauranga

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23rd - 27th December 2008 Papamoa Beach and Tauranga

Rob is terrible at navigation - he kept getting lost in our little hostel in Auckland, so when he said he would remember how to get around Tauranga (which he visited 10 years ago) and find Olive's house (the lady he lodged with then), my heart sank. But I didn't want to upset him, so I went along with it, although I said to him it might have really changed over the years. Undeterred, he seemed very confident. Some time later, after much head-scratching from Rob (who had stayed very calm), he finally had to admit that he recognised hardly anything. We went back into the centre of Tauranga to the tourist information where we got Olive's address from the phone book and a map. We set off again, and Rob was chuffed to see that, actually, he had been on the right road, just not gone far enough along it.

We got to Olive's - she has a small-holding where she has 12 rescue donkeys, 2 dogs, 4 cats and some chucks. She also had borrowed (for her Christmas Nativity barn) 2 pigs, 2 goats and a sheep. Olive is an amazing lady. She has so much energy for her animals and tears around on her mini tractor, filled with manure she has shovelled up. We had a great time catching up with her - she was so pleased to see Rob. She invited us to stay, but we didn't like to intrude over Christmas Eve and Day, so said we would pop back on Boxing Day to do some jobs for her.

We spent Christmas at Papamoa Beach, just outside Tauranga. The beach was lovely and the weather was sunny on Christmas Day, so we spent time on the beach bodyboarding. It was great fun and we both got really quite good at it. Strange to think that everyone back home would soon be sitting down to a big turkey roast - it didn't seem like Christmas at all. Before we left Papamoa we walked around Mount Manganui - lovely views out to sea.

We went back to Olive's and had a brilliant time helping her with some jobs around the place. I offered to 'poo-pick' her field - It took me 4 hours and I ached like mad the next day - I suspect Olive would have done it in half the time! We stayed the night and were really sad to say goodbye the next day - Olive is great company, with so many tales to tell, we could have stayed a week quite happily! We went away with some lovely fresh eggs from the chucks, which I collected from the barn.

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Photos

Tauranga
Olive and Rob

Tauranga
Olive's barn animals

Tauranga
Olive's dogs

Tauranga
Feeding time

Tauranga
Rob and the donkeys

Tauranga
Olive's Xmas barn