Mission house, kiwi fruit and honey: our day in Tauranga

The weather gods continued to cooperate as we sailed into the picturesque city of Tauranga by Dawn’s early light. Again, we opted to take a tour to learn about the history of the area and its agricultural products.

The first part of our tour today concentrated in the beginning of the settlement with a visit to the Elms/ Te Papa, one of New Zealand’s oldest heritage sites. You will see the mission house, which brought the Anglican Church and its clergy to the new town in 1838 by the Reverend Alfred Brown. . It’s still a fully functional gathering site today and can be hired out for special events, such as weddings.

For more information, go to theelms.org.nz.

The guides were all dressed in period costume, and our guide was very informative and perky. She showed us the house the family lived in, gave us a history of the family, and we saw the downstairs rooms of their living quarters, which remains today as it was in those early days.

The gardens developed over the years and were beautifully kept, as there were many outdoor receptions and gatherings among the early settlers. Once in the chapel, our guide explained the role that the first spiritual family played In the cultural and spiritual life of the early settlers.

As the settlement grew, several outbuildings were added, such as the kitchen and the sheds. The plants in the gardens were also used for medicinal purposes to safeguard the health of the early inhabitants.

My favorite little house on the property was the library, where we could see the writing desk and area where the minister prepared his sermons. The room even housed his old books. He could stay warm with the coal fire.

After leaving this interesting place, we drove over to other parts of the city where we went to a community center with an area for tea and kiwi fruit scones, then we were offered an opportunity to taste and purchase products made from kiwi fruit, from kiwi fruit chocolates to liqueur to remedies for constipation. The golden kiwi, not yet exported to the US, was very tasty and we were told we can expect to find it in our local supermarkets in a few years.

We stopped in another factory to learn about the bees of New Zealand and their production of manufacturing honey, and, again were offered a buying opportunity for products from skin cream to wound care and cough medicines.

The most interesting part of this tour of the kiwi was the visit to the kiwi orchard, where, under the fruit canopies, the owner explained how the kiwi fruit is formed and cultivated with the help of the honey bees.

As always, our time was limited and we were not able to stroll around the area near the ship after the tour, so we were unable to see the nearby seaside resorts, which were beautiful and extensive. We visited some rural areas so I was surprised to see that this is also a very prosperous area, with multimillion dollar homes fronting the sea and an extensive area for tourism.

The sailaway was quite lovely.

Our evening hours were spent packing, eating dinner, going to the main show, packing, visiting our favorite two groups, Lincoln Center and the billboard boys, packing, and setting out luggage before the witching hour of midnight. We finished out the evening at Billboard on board, where Anderson and Justin took requests. They’ll be on board for seven more weeks. If you take this cruise in the not-too- distant future, go see them!

We have brown luggage tags,which means we can leave the ship at 9:00-9:30. All we have to do is throw in our clothes and grab some food in the Lido and we are off to Aukland, our final destination.