Day 31- Wednesday February 14, 2024, Rotorua (Tauranga) New Zealand

Arrival 08:30 All Aboard 16:15 Departure 16:45

The pilot boat is quickly approaching Insignia at 07:15. What I found interesting was the two pilots (officials) who boarded the ship were clipped by a harness to a metal railing as they moved from the back of the pilot boat to the front. They would unclip themselves only when boarding the vessel. I had not seen this before in the many pilot boat pictures I have. It is a good safety feature and I always wondered why they didn't take more precautions, especially in rough seas.

As we make our way into the Bay of Plenty Harbour, one of the tugs was tethered to the back of the ship to act as a guide. Tauranga's majestic Mount Maunganui marks the harbour entrance to the Bay of Plenty. More on the Mountain later.

Tauranga is the largest shipping port in New Zealand handling 40% of goods entering or leaving the country.

Our ship tour was cancelled due to operator difficulties but we were not informed of this until the first night in Auckland by Destination Services. This does not give us much time to find another tour. The tour I had booked included a Maori Haka which I have seen performed by the All-Blacks Haka before each rugby game and had hoped to see it in person.

On short notice I looked for a Viator for February 14 which I found that visited a Maori Village and the Sulphur springs. It was two to three hours in duration and we needed to be back on the ship at 16:15. OK it is booked for the noon hour.

We left the ship at 10:00 to have a look around the town of Tauranga prior to our tour. This is the first stop where New Zealand officials looked into our bags to ensure no food products were taken from the ship. We now needed to find an information booth to tell us what might be of interest before our tour began. Janice asked the employee where the address of tour meeting was. We soon found out that the tour we booked was in Rotorua at least 1.5 hours away which as they said in the movie "Houston we have a problem".

There is no way we can make our tour.

As a fallback we thought - let's climb the mountain then go swimming at the Mount Maunganui Main Beach followed by lunch and shopping. A very good plan so back to the ship for swimming suits, towels, and a change into our hiking clothes.

Using the walkway on Pilot Beach we make our way to Mount Maunganui 232 meters above sea level. The path to the top is not that difficult but some areas are rather steep. A false summit provides excellent vistas of the surrounding area and the Pacific Ocean. The summit unfortunately is another 300 meters straight up.

We have now made it to the summit and need to find our way back down to Mount Mauganui beach. The trail to the right provides a way down with lots of stairs. Janice was saying that it was better to climb up on the left side of the mountain and then take the stairs down which is what we luckily did.

Back down notice the rough surf so we decided to skip the swimming and find a place for lunch. The choice we made was not great but the views of the ocean were excellent.

After lunch we walked the beach. Janice got closer to the water than I did but the waves looked appealing.

Finally, we found the shopping district with its many restaurants and clothing stores. Both of us found clothes to buy, a shirt for me and dress for Janice.

I had thought Trivia was 16:15 but when I arrived found out that I was late. The results were the same, no points even though five teams from the previous segment had left the ship.

It is now 16:45 and Insignia is making its way to its next port. Two tugs on the port side are tethered to Insignia helping her depart.

We are now off to our next port Dunedin, 288 nautical miles away.

We both fell in love with this part of New Zealand. Who knows we may be back here in the not to distance future.