A weekend in Tauranga has a wet theme for Sarah Lawrence who goes kayaking, to a seafood festival, looks for dolphins and visits hot pools.
It's hard enough trying to get out of Auckland on a Friday at the best of times, let alone at the start of a sunny summer weekend. The Southern Motorway is gridlocked and stress levels are rising. Nevertheless, within hours we are standing at the water's edge of peaceful Lake McLaren just north of Tauranga, soaking up a stunning pink sunset, sipping a glass of pinot and listening to tales of our tour guide's hilarious kayaking exploits.
Blair Anderson, our guide for the evening, is the owner of Waimarino Kayak Tours - and claims to run the only tour of its kind in New Zealand. We'll be taking a leisurely kayak up Lake McLaren into a spectacular glow worm cave.
I hadn't kayaked in a long time and it seems to take me a lot longer than most to get the hang of steering the vessel. Everyone else on the tour gracefully meanders along behind Blair, happily chatting as they go. In stark contrast, I seem incapable of holding the line and keep going off in strange tangents - much to the dismay of my 10-year-old passenger, who happens to be my son Jack. It's just as well I don't drive as badly as I kayak or we'd never have made it out of Auckland.
Just as I'm feeling slightly more competent, we spot small glowing speckles scattered between foliage along the darkened hillface, as if guiding us into the cave.
