The Daily English Show: 04.11

Saturday, April 30, 2011

#1391 Mount Maunganui To Hot Water Beach: Farmers Market, Plants, Planes And Hot Springs

The latest version of this transcript has been moved here:
http://www.thedailyenglishshow.com/show/1391-mount-maunganui-to-hot-water-beach-farmers-market-plants-planes-and-hot-springs/

Day 30 was the second-to-last day of our summer tour.

In the morning we went to the Mount Maunganui Farmers Market.

We bought some avocados and a little plant. The guy who sold it to us said he’d been growing cacti and succulents for about ten years.

I was drawn to them mainly for their forms and colour. And the variety that’s available. In fact my daughter actually bought one, that was the very first plant I had. And I looked after it. It was only a little plant like this, about three inches tall or something. And ever since then I sort of got a bit hooked. So every time I went to a market and I saw someone selling these plants, I would just grab one and next week another one and then I just kept going until I just got such a huge collection. And now here I am having to sell them myself.
Phillip Pointon
Mount Maunganui Farmers Market

The plant we bought was called a Haworthia and I asked if it would flower.

Yes, the flowers are right here. Here’s one here flowering. You can see the … it will come up on a big stem like that. And the flowers will open out. They’re cream in colour. And they open out, sort of leaves will open out sideways. And the flowers on the Hawarthias are all the same. So you might have all these different Hawarthias - twenty, thirty, forty different Haworthias - all exactly the same flower. Just slightly bigger on some of them, but the flowers are exactly the same.

We stopped for a coffee in Tauranga and then headed north towards the Coromandel Peninsula.

We stopped in a town called Katikati which is famous for its murals.
We also saw some haiku … and a guy reading the paper on a park bench.

We stopped to check out the beach in Whangamata.

A bit further up the road we saw some planes doing tricks in the sky. Lots of people had parked on the side of the road to watch, so we decided to join them.

That night we stayed at Hot Water Beach. I love this beach. It was the closest surf beach to my house when I was growing up and I used to come here a lot. These signs are new, but the beach looked just the same.

We made some sushi and drank Wrights Wine to celebrate the last night of our summer tour.

At about 9:30 we walked down to the beach.

Hot Water Beach is famous for its hot springs. A couple of hours either side of low tide you can dig a hole in the sand and make your own hot pool.

We had to cross a little stream to get to the main part of the beach. Luckily the cameraperson didn’t slip over, the camera wouldn’t have liked that.

Lots of people were enjoying the hot springs and had bought their togs, spades, chilly bins and wine. We were happy with getting just our feet warm. It felt so nice.