From time to time the Club holds weekends that offer an outdoor pursuit other than tramping, and on this occasion the pursuit was blokarting (land yachting), plus four shorter tramps including a night walk, dining out, hot swims and a touch of retail therapy. A total of 19 people joined in a wonderful and relaxing social weekend. Friday We left from Auckland at varying times during the afternoon for the journey to Tauranga and our home for the next two nights, the Welcome Bay Hot Springs holiday park. Our accommodation was the entire cabin accommodation offered by the holiday park - a unit containing kitchen, showers, laundry and a 6-bed dorm, and a stand-alone cabin nearby containing 5 beds - being a mere half-minute walk to the hot pools, a great place to relax after munchies at a nearby Chinese takeaway. At 9:30pm our leader Phillip, who lives locally, joined us for supper and to brief us on what we would be enjoying over the next two days.

Saturday Phillip and Katrina arrived for breakfast at 8am, and Katrina collected our monies for the travel, food and accommodation. By 9am we were away headed to the Papamoa Hills Regional Park for our climb to the summit trig.

We climbed up through pine forest with the occasional glimpses down to the coast. Later the characteristic outline of the summit, a former Maori pa, came into view as the vehicle track entered open country. There was a view all around from the summit - Tauranga, Mauao, the Bay of Plenty, Maketu, Te Puke, Otawa trig (which we climbed in August 2001) and the hill countryto the south. After Phillip read out a couple of funny poems from a book of comic verse, Katrina shared scriptures about the mother side of God. Our devotional theme for the weekend was God as our heavenly parents - today we would explore His “mother” qualities, and on Sunday at the Otanewainuku shelter Phillip would cover the “dad” aspects of God as it would be Fathers’ Day. Motherly aspects of God shared by Katrina included (1) labour pains likened to the suffering and pain of Jesus on the Cross (2) midwife at one’s birth Psalm 22 (3) God comforts like a mother  (4) a nursing mother. The Song of Solomon, the greatest love letter of all time, can be read at any level - marriage, the love of a mum to her children, God’s love for us, and the Christian’s love for God. We returned the same way to the carpark and drove to the blokarts at Papamoa. About half the group paid $30 each to try out these small land yachts for 30 minutes; this included instruction on how to ride them  Each one of us who gave it a go was able to be “sailing” within a few minutes and had a wonderful time as they blokarted numerous times around the course. Afterwards we shared our experiences over lunch at the BBs Cafe at Fashion Island, a new shopping centre in the suburb of Papamoa. We had one hour to eat our lunch and try some retail therapy - one person bought two nice pairs of shoes that were on special at a shoe store.

At 2:15pm we drove to the Raparapahoe Falls track near Te Puke and set out on the 30-minute walk to the falls. The well-formed track dropped down quickly into a deep gorge covered in native bush. On our way down we heard a muffled gunshot in the distance, presumably from someone hunting in the area but well away from the public tracks.  The falls was a low but voluminous waterfall cascading into a large pool, still a spectacle to behold.

Phillip ventured across to the other side of the stream at the end of the large pool, stopping on a tiny island in the stream. We returned to the carpark, hearing another distant and muffled gunshot as we climbed the track, then drove back to the holiday park for a relaxing soak in the hot springs. At 5:45pm we were back in the cars, this time for Mt Maunganui and a yummy dinner at Zeytins. This was exceptional value for a set-menu restaurant - the main course cost only about $13-$15 (cash/eftpos only, no credit cards accepted) and was enough to fill our stomachs completely, only one man had an entree, and we all settled on a tiny 50-cent turkish delight for our dessert! All but two of the ladies had a go afterwards at climbing Mauao by torch and moonlight. We parked our cars about five minutes walk from the entrance to the Mauao track on the harbour side of the Mt Maunganui peninsula, then set out to climb the wide vehicle track to the summit of the mountain. It was a pleasant and steady uphill walk on a clear still moonlit evening It took about an hour to reach the summit of Mauao, and we were rewarded with fairyland views of downtown Mt Maunganui below, with the lights of central Tauranga in the distance. We took a well-formed track through the bush along the south side of the mountain to join up with the vehicle track further down, and could see the lights of Tauranga and later Mt Maunganui ahead as we returned to our cars just before 10pm.

An invitation to have supper at Phillip’s home was turned down as it was getting late and we were getting tired; after picking up the two ladies we went straight back to the holiday park at Welcome Bay. Sunday Heads of wentilillos early - we had to breakfast and pack up to be away by 8am. But that was not difficult, the sun had got out of bed at 6:30am before we did!  Our tramp for the morning was to the Whataroa Falls south of Tauranga near Otanewainuku. The falls are reached by a one hour track through bush, descending gradually.

The falls themselves were set in a narrow gorge, and made a good spot for a break. Most of us ventured down a rough route to view the spectacular lower cascades of Whataroa Falls, and two of us lay on our tummies to look down the bottom waterfall. We returned the way we came, except for the last part where we took a direct track instead of the Rimu Loop we had followed to start with. About three-quarters of the way back we stopped for a quick break. Katrina had gone on ahead and by the time we reached the Otanewainuku shelter beside the carpark she was standing at the table getting our lunch ready. As we dined on two bread rolls each plus jam sponge, anzac biscuits and fruit, Phillip shared thoughts about the father side of God - aspects shared included authority, affection, fellowship and honour. We are children of God, God is our Father, heaven is our home, our Saviour is our Brother, and every Christian is a member of our family! The option of climbing Otanewainuku was offered, but we all felt we had had such a good weekend of variety and opted for a leisurely trip home, with two car loads joining up for a break at a coffee shop in Matamata.

COST: $70 (travel $30, accommodation $30, 2 breakfasts plus Sunday lunch $10); blokarts $30 for 30 minutes; dinner at Zeytins $17-$25 depending on choice of drinks and mains.