We had high hopes when we reached the Eastern Coast of the North Island – an area referred to as “The Bay of Plenty.” The beaches and hot springs were supposed to be amazing, with crystal clear waters, beautiful parks. It sounded like a regular Shangri-la. Similarly, the description of the Tauranga holiday park we pulled into for the evening sounded amazing. According to the guidebook, it had thermal pools and an ocean view.
The left out the part about how it was more like a long-term live-in trailer park, rather than a holiday park. The “cottages” were actually occupied by long-term residents who had decorated their “front yards” with tires, discarded furniture and rusty chains. The “relaxing natural thermal pools” was a luke warm swimming pool (child’s size), with peeling paint. The kitchen was a little hodge podge, with mismatched tables of varying heights, a sketchy 1970s refrigerator, and a collection of about 50 mugs from various places in the world.
We had been looking forward to a nice holiday park all day, and were pretty let down when we rolled into town. But, we made the most of it, cooked ourselves up another gourmet dinner of New Zealand mussels, popped open a bottle of NZ red, and watched the sunset from our concrete ‘dock’ that faced the highway. It couldn’t have been all that bad if we had a view like this, especially with all the wine we drank out of those purple plastic cups.
