Tauranga Weekend

Feb 26
A group of us AustraLearn students (14 total) headed to Tauranga for the weekend. While on the bus there (we took Intercity Coach for $45).
I was sitting next to a pacific island dude, with the full shorts tattoo called a moko. A moko is a series of tattoo patterns that represent the wearer's genealogy, social status, and history. This site is pretty solid to explain Maori tattoo's. The art form of the moko is still very much alive here in New Zealand, I see Maori and pacific island people everywhere with these beautiful tattoos. So much better looking then the flames and skulls and other white trash tattoos of the states.






I am going to talk about the barefoot culture of New Zealand for a bit. Everywhere I go I see kiwi (local people) walking around totally barefoot. This is so cool! The Maori culture respects the earth, so hardly anyone spits on the ground, there are rarely broken bottles, and the streets are fairly clean. For the most part, I do not have shoes on while I am here. That's right, I have hardly worn any shoes. No shoes at the uni (college), no shoes in the grocery store, no shoes in restaurants. What a liberating feeling! I know... take a bath hippie, but for real though, this is awesome. When I am wearing shoes, I wear my FiveFingers all day and am so comfortable and happy! I'll do a separate post on FiveFingers shortly. Long story short, buy a pair with that link.

So we get off the bus and walk to the backpackers (hostel), people drop their junk off and we head off to the mount. The hike up was nice and slow and we stopped and took a bunch of pictures along the way. A picture is worth a thousand words, so check these out. All photos were taken with my Fujifilm FinePix HS10, and are un-shopped.

Mount Maunganui

At the top of Mount Maunganui

At the top!

The Tauranga group.

I decided to run down the mount, a good decision! Felt so good to run and move. When I got to the bottom a kiwi couple asked me to come chill with them and drink a beer, so naturally I did. We just chatted about United States and how the way of life is different then in New Zealand. The couple had a daughter in the under 14 surfing life guard competition that was going on, that is why they were there. It was nice to just chill with them and chat with some real locals. Sweet as!

 As the day was coming to an end I got this really beautiful shot of a little girl chasing seagulls. Dig it.
At night there was a pretty cool party that the other hostel people were having, so naturally our group joins in. Nothing too crazy or anything. This dude was playing wizard sticks (throw back to my friends at school).






I ended up sleeping on the floor of the hostel in my Marmont sawtooth sleeping bag. I wanted to sleep on top of the Mount, but it started to rain booooo. The floor sucked, but the sleeping bag was awesome!







Feb 27
A group of us got up at 6am to go watch the sunrise. This was so so SO beautiful to watch the sun slowly come up over the Pacific Ocean, hear the crashing of the water on the rock, and slowly feel the warmth of the sun. Life is beautiful.

This is real life

After the sunrise we head into town and get breakfast. This dude rolls up with this little gem of kiwi humor. Naturally I had to capture this moment. 

All in all a great weekend. Need to head back to Hamilton, classes start on Monday the 28th of February!