What if?

That next overnight stop was in a small hostel 10 km south of KatiKati, first stopping over to have a look at Mt Maunganui.  Katikati being a small town which is known as the ‘Mural Town’ as it has 41 hand painted Murals dotted all around its main road, its only road that has any shops etc so it’s really impressive to look at them within this short confined area.  Also think, where in the world could you have 41 paintings open to public viewing that would not be vandalised in any way?  Certainly not in the UK that’s for sure.  Yet again the hostel was a good choice, Kingfisher Backpackers Lodge is owed and run by a family who have placed it in the middle of their small Avocado orchard, the only noise is the 2 Hens as they eat and lay their Eggs while wondering around.  We stayed here for 2 nights while we looked around the local area and beaches, Wahia beach is just amazing; 10 km north of Katikati and easy to find it’s 6km of soft sand.  No surf or wind to be had, but a lovely walk along a beach that if we win the Lotto; is very near top of our ‘where we want to live’ list.  We also headed back south a little into the Tauranga area not only to walk up and around Mt Maunganui, which overlooks the Harbour and beaches of the Tauranga area; but to check out the ‘world class’ surf from the manmade reef 250 mtr’s off of the Mt itself.  The day was a little overcast, and shame to say not a patch on the previous visit to this Mt; but the short walk up to the view over the City below was worth a look.  For the second day we had our packed lunch on the beach, overlooked by Mt Maunganui while cursing the ‘Jinxed’ Surfboard yet again.  We were heading out the following day to the Coromandel Peninsula, so we took this afternoon to stock up on supplies; return to the hostel for a slap up dinner and some beers.  We headed out nice and early, we had been told to look in the Hot water beach on the way up to our next stay at the top of the Peninsula.  The weather had turned to rain this morning, the first we had seen in a very long time; so no real complaints from us or the locals who were experiencing a dry time.  As we drove up through the Peninsula towards our next stop we were making good time over this leg of our trip, good time to the point we thought we would look in on the Hot water beach; BIG mistake.  Mistake because we were not prepared for the time spent trying to find the ‘Hot water’ we left the beach a little disappointed in the ‘Hot water’ if there was indeed any?  Not entirely a wasted trip, Em made some new friends in the form of the local birds; after she feed 1 of them the word got out and they all came to visit her.  We arrived at the Hostel and explained our visit to the beach, after which they explained where we went wrong.