August 12th (Wednesday) - Day 164 - Mount Maunganui
I hardly slept all night because I'd been sleeping all day the day before. So I forced myself to stay awake by reading. Not the best idea as reading makes me sleepy but it was a good book. We back tracked on our pass as we went back through Taupo (picking up people) and also back to Rotorua. We'd already stopped in both these places so weren't stopping the night. We visited the Huka falls that Sarah and I had ridden to through the woods. This time was more impressive though as there was almost twice as much water going over. We then had a 90 minute break in Rotorua. Most people went off and saw the lake or did a walk, we ended up souvenir shopping. There were a few things I saw in Rotorua that I had not seen anywhere else which makes them unique. Hence we snapped up the chance to get them. Once we got back on the bus we then headed out to the Zorb centre. Again Sarah and I had already done this. I wanted to do it again but decided not to in the end. We finally arrived into Mount Maunganui late that afternoon. Famous for its 350 metre high mount at the end of the town which is also the end of the land if that makes sense. We had a very slow check in at the hostel as they wanted to give us all tea and then talk a little about the area. We were just anxious as we were losing day light in which to climb the mountain. When we finally started to walk we realised how far away it was. It took a good 30 minutes to reach the base from our hostel. We didn't know how long it would take to climb and we could tell we didn't have a lot more sunlight left. We decided to see how far we could get. About half way up I was ready to turn around and go back as I didn't think we'd make it in time but Sarah convinced me we should try. If someone told me 6 months ago Sarah would be enjoying a walk; let alone dragging me up a mountain I would have laughed at them (sorry Sarah :) ). We kept on going and managed to reach the top just as the final light was fading. Well worth it and we got some really nice photos. At the top we bumped into someone else off the bus called Helen. We all walked down together in the dark. Once back in town (around 7pm) we decided to go for a pint to celebrate our achievement. We kind of didn't leave this place until gone midnight. There was a quiz on but we decided not to take part after our last two attempts. We did answer them to ourselves and we'd of got about 12 out of 50. For some unknown reason the alcohol levels meant we were hugging numerous trees on the way home.