Day 6 - Mt Maunganui

Ahhh. Papamoa Beach.

I look out from the Maui window to figure out where those girls have gotten to and I see this. I'm not sure what they were doing either (it wasn't cleaning their teeth as per instruction), but apparently it was therapeutic. Go figure.

maybe they were right - teeth cleaning doesn't look nearly as much fun, does it?

The beach is a good spot to view the mountain. It is only small from here. All were adamant that they could climb it. Sure, we'll take a 4yo to climb an old volcano. What were we thinking?

About 10 steps into the journey, we get this face. "How far up is it?" We should have cut our losses at this point, but no...we insisted they keep going.

And they did stoically.....just until they passed the point of no return. Why do children hide tear-wrenching fatigue until it is as far to go back as it is to forge on? And how do they instinctively know where that point is? All good questions. At least we learnt this lesson on the smaller of the mountains that we were to navigate on our trip.




Big Red stopped crying long enough for the obligatory photo at the top to prove that she had in fact climbed the mountain and was due the chocolate milkshake promised if she would just keep walking.




The small blonde considered giving her father a sharp shove at this point. But thought better of it when she remembered he would be required to get her down the other side to the milkshake.

Lesson learnt. No more mountains.

We finished the day with play area #84. I think we stopped at all 548 by the end.