New Year's Eve / Papamoa Beach

NEW YEAR'S EVE / MT. MAUNGANUI / PAPAMOA BEACH (62km, 963km total) - The moon was bright last night, so bright I had to wrap my blanket over my head to fall asleep. It was comfortable though, sleeping on the sand. The corners of my hammock and ground cloth were pulled up a bit, forming a little bowl that served to protect me from the wind. We got an earlier start this morning, hitting the road by around 9:15am. We deliberately didn't have very far to go, although we weren't sure where exactly we were going to sleep.

Turkish to Go

Couchsurfing in Mt. Maungaui had fallen through and all the holiday parks and hostels were full up. our only lead was a holiday park in Papamoa that had told us if we turned up they might have a place fur us to sleep. We arrived there plenty early, just before 11:30am, and they did indeed manage to squeeze us in. We got half of a campsite on a glorified dirt patch, but at least it was somewhere. We set up our little camp and had a bit to eat at a place called Turkish to Go and a wander around the park. It was filled to the absolute brim, mostly with families in humongous house tents. I even saw one with a full-size refrigerator!

After lunch we had a choice: we could either ride our bikes down to Mt. Maunganui (where all the New Year's festivities were), or we could wait and ride the $10 bus down. The camp staff had told us Mauao was 20-26km away, but our maps showed us it was more like 6-10km. We didn't like the prospect of riding home 26km after a good night of New Year's Eve festivities, but we also didn't like the idea of waiting around until 9pm so the bus could take us. In the end we decided to ride in. It turned out to be a nice flat road of only about 10km, so it was a good thing we did.

Going Down Mauao

Mt. Maunganui was in full New Year's Eve mode when we got there. There were sops everywhere and the entire CBD was blocked off for pedestrians only. We had a couple drinks at two of the bars downtown before setting off to climb the 232m mountain at the edge of the peninsula which gives the town it's name. The hike up was beautiful, if a bit slick from all the loose gravel. The views from the top showed the whole town reaching down the beach. We could see Tauranga next to it, spreading back into the hills. Then on three sides were stunningly blue water with the odd island breaking up the horizon. It's views like these that make me want to live on the ocean and have a little sailboat to tool around the coast on. Also at the top we ran into this wild looking older man wearing a helmet. He proceeded to tell us all about how the UFO's told him that when the Americans pull out of Iraq the RUssians are going to start an atomic war and everyone except the people in New Zealand were going to die because the Pope is a Nazi . . . or something like that. Shad listened to him for a while then started asking him more probing questions about why he was going around telling people this for the last 25 years. Of course, once the questions came the guy couldn't be bothered and quickly headed off down the mountain. We spend a bit of time then actually enjoying the summit and then headed back down for more festivities. After a long haul down to the bottom we finally found a sign that had a map of the trails. Turns out we walked probably the longest possible combination of routes we could have possible walked! Oh well.

Looking out from Mauao

We then went back into town and found some food at one place, a beer at another bar (where Shad was shunned by the waitress for putting Bob Dylan on the jukebox), and another beer at another bar. The last one was an Irish Pub where we engaged in a few games of darts and then taught the bartenders what an Irish Car Bomb is.

We walked back into the festival area then, where they had the roads completely blocked off along the beach, people everywhere, carnival stalls and rides, and two music stages. It sounds great, and it was fairly good. The only problem was that there was no alcohol allowed on the premises except for two cafe/bars down on the far end, where a glass of wine was $10 and a single corona was $9. I sat down and watched the bands on the stage for as long as I could. The cover band was okay... but then they brought out this "musical theater" group (read: paid karaoke singers) who were fairly horrible. AFter listening to them I would have paid anything for a drink, so $9 beers we went.

We met a young group of Kiwis at the cafe who insisted that we bring in the new year with them. But at only 17 & 18 years old, I was keen to find a way to lose them in the crowd. That's exactly what I did with about 10 minutes to go. Shad and I were in the middle of the huge crowd in front of the stage with the countdown as the first seconds of 2010 on Earth ticked away. There were fireworks going out over the water and people everywhere. It was sort of a weird new year's. Good... but also odd.

New Year's 00:00

After midnight Shad and I went off to find some more affordable drinks. Our first attempt was at a Brazilian place where it seemed like all the women were having their own private party. Shad tried again and again to find a woman who would dance with him, but was rejected each time. (I blame the blood encrusted hands.) Our next attempt was a packed Irish bar that we closed down. There Shad at least had luck with conversation, meeting a pair of foreign girls: one French, one Spanish. Eventually we had to part ways and bike back to our campsite where the two of us squeezed into Shad's little tent (no place for a hammock). It's a bit too cozy in here and I'm glad I have my own place to sleep most of the time.

New Year's Eve / Papamoa Beach

Mount Maunganui, New Zealand