It was 4 o' clock on a Monday when we arrived in Tauranga, glad that we had made it through an hour of tortuous roads. We drove straight through downtown, which was quiet--a little too quiet. As a tumbleweed rolled across the--OK, that didn't happen, but in the middle of town on the main strip, we were just about the only thing moving. We decided to check in at our hotel to see if anybody was there. The hotel was a little on the old side and normally served as a conference center, which meant that it had plenty of rooms. It's emptiness, size, and woodiness reminded me a bit of The Shining. And then there were the creepy twins. Well, there were no creepy twins, but we probably saw ten other people the entire time we were in the hotel.
After checking in, we decided to venture out to get some headache medicine and dinner. While looking for a drug store, we heard the slow beat of drums: pum . . . pum . . . pum. As we walked, they grew louder and louder: PUM! . . . PUM! . . . PUM! As we rounded the corner, my heart leaped into my throat--well, not really. We had found the reason the entire town felt empty. It was a parade! Almost everybody had closed shop to walk and collect money in a parade supporting their fellow New Zealanders in Christchurch, who were suffering from the earthquake that had hit three weeks earlier. As they walked through the closed off streets, people put money into the buckets firemen were carrying. I hadn't seen anything like it: a whole town shut down to support a city on a different island. Everybody was dressed in a red and black, and the atmosphere was actually festive.
The parade to support Christchurch was full of people in red and black.
We walked with the crowd for a little bit until we found a pharmacy and bought some Panadol, which is basically Tylenol. The big difference was that Panadol's expiration date was about two weeks from the date we purchased it, which seemed a bit ridiculous. We then grabbed one of the foods on Emily's New Zealand eats list, which included green-lipped mussels, fish and chips, kumara (a sweet potato-like root), hokey pokey ice cream, and meat pies.
Our meal was the best part of Tauranga for me and so so so good. I've had fish and chips a number of times because fried fish and fried potatoes sounds like it should taste almost as good as fried snickers. Unfortunately, I have usually been unimpressed. But not this time. Emily had read about a fish place where you line up, order, and then wait twenty minutes for them to get to your order and fry your fish and chips. It was well worth the wait. We sat down by the harbor and opened the newspaper wrapping that we received over the counter. The batter was crisp, the fish fresh and flaky, and the whole fillet felt melted in my mouth. And it didn't sit in my stomach like all the other fish and chips I had eaten. It felt lighter, even after eating the fried goodness. The only curse was that I would continue searching for fish and chips that tasted as good during the rest of the trip. I did not find it.
Fish and chips? Try DeFishous and Chips. I tried to get this word to catch on with my nephew when he was three. I will keep trying.
The next morning, we arose early to get to the dock for our trip to swim with dolphins. We tried on wet suits and flippers, which would have been necessary if we sighted dolphins and the captain decided conditions were good for swimming with them. I won't dwell on this part of the trip because it makes me a little sad, but we boarded the boat and returned 5 hours later, having not seen a single thing in the water. For our money and time, we got a tour of the Bay of Plenty, some breakfast biscuits and tea, and the captain telling us about how rare it was not to see anything and how he could not explain it because the day before was awesome--he mentioned this multiple times. So, like the town the evening before, the sea was apparently deserted. The captain said a day without seeing anything happens only 2% of the time. We should have bought a lottery ticket that day. Even though we could have stayed around a second day to try to swim with the dolphins for free, but we had a lot more to see. I hear swimming with the dolphins is amazing, and so next time we will try a place called Kaikoura, where our friends had accomplished it. We had tried Tauranga because it had fit into our schedule a little better.
Our Seafaris ship. Get it? Like a safari but in the sea.
We did see a nice view of this island in the Bay of Plenty. 
This cloud was the closest thing to a dolphin that we saw. Even the sky taunted us.
When the captain told us he was giving up, we were sad. When he told us exactly how infrequently this happens, we were even sadder and made these faces.
After our poor luck on the sea, we hope our next journey on land would be more successful. So, once we docked, we grabbed some much needed lunch and drove three hours to Tongariro, where we ended the day on a happier note. We were ready to hike through a volcanic landscape.
At the end of the day, we made it to our next destination, which made us happy. You can see our volcanic objective for the next day in the background.
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