Sunny Bay of Plenty and Mount Maunganui — where Tauranga is New Zealand's fastest-growing city (overtook Wellington in population in 2021) and New Zealand's largest export port by volume, Mount Maunganui ('the Mount') is a 232-metre volcanic plug with a 3.4 km summit walk rewarded by views of the Bay of Plenty to Whakaari (White Island) and the Coromandel Peninsula, the Pāpāmoa hills give sunset panoramas over 10 km of white-sand beach, and the kiwifruit orchards of the Eastern Bay of Plenty (Te Puke is the kiwifruit capital of the world, 30 km east) turn green-gold in autumn harvest
Tauranga (160,000 city; metro 210,000) is the largest city in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand's North Island and New Zealand's fastest-growing large city (it overtook Wellington in 2021 population rankings for the first time). The Port of Tauranga handles more tonnage than any other New Zealand port (principally timber, kiwifruit, and dairy exports), and the adjacent suburb of Mount Maunganui — on the narrow Ōtāiti Peninsula separating the harbour from the open Pacific — gives the city New Zealand's most popular beach holiday destination. The Bay of Plenty (named by Captain Cook in 17…
The Bay of Plenty and Tauranga area was settled by Māori (principally the iwi of Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Ranginui, and Ngāti Pūkenga) and the region was known to Māori as Te Moana-a-Toi ('the Sea of Toi') — Toi-kai-rākau was an early Polynesian explorer said to have settled the area before the main waka migration from Hawaiki. European contact occurred via Captain James Cook's 1769 voyage (he named the bay 'Bay of Plenty' for the abundance of food resources). The first permanent European settlement was a Church Missionary Society mission (1835). The Battle of Gate Pā (Pūkehinahina, April 29, 186…