Labour Weekend in Auckland

 Oh woe is me, we visited Auckland at the weekend and Loo and Molly found the shops!

We stayed at the Sky Tower Hotel, complete with roof-top pool.

Loo and Molly really fell in love with the traditional Kiwi houses in Auckland.

The Zoo is marvellous.

 




Molly ate a chicken nugget in front of a cockerel, it only seems like a few weeks since she discovered what they were made from and became squeamish for a short while!

                                                  

The Kiwi guys are real lookers

As you can see, the animals were very well cared for

 Especially these ones!













On the way back to Mount Maunganui we passed through Paeroa, home of the L&P (lemon and paeroa drink) It proudly proclaims on their bottles that they are famous throughout the world in New Zealand!

As it was labour day on Monday (Bank Holiday) we had a walk along the beach and Molly went on the bouncy thing.

Hope you like the photos, we are packing our suitcases tonight and will be in the new temporary accommodation from tomorrow until at least the end of January. The majority of our belongings will be arriving at midday, but the morning will be reserved for some military style cleaning operations!

Must go, Loo is waiting with the rubber gloves and feather duster!

Pink beaches, paragliders and glow worms

I'm sat at the beach, waiting for the sun to come up, so that I can go for a run. So in the meantime, here is our weekend update.

Saturday consisted of a walk and lots of swimming in the pool, Loo and Molly needed a chilled day and an early night, in preparation for Sunday.

Sunday was an early call to enable us to get to Papamoa beach for 9:30. As any of you who have had the delight of sharing a house with Loo and Molly when they have to be out early, this was a military operation: Vietnam!

Anyway, we made it through alive, and actually unscathed to arrive on time after picking Anita up.

All the ladies were resplendent in their pinkest finery, ready for the Breast Cancer charity walk.

Loo was in her element during the aerobic warm-up.

What would Captain Cook have said when he landed,
if this had greeted him 400 years ago?

Even Molly can be embarrassed by her parents!

What a lurvely pair!

Like Mother, like Daughter.

Para-gliders jump from the top of The Mount and glide down onto the beach.

Then it was back to the apartment for some more swimming and a chill, ready for the late night adventure.







We drove about 30 minutes up into the hills to the McLaren waterfalls, arriving at dusk. After about a twenty minute through the woods in the dark, we turned off our torches and as our eyes became accustomed to the dark, thousands of glow worms were revealed!

I'd like to say that I was good enough to take this picture......

...unfortunately, mine turned out like this, so I had to steal a pic from the net!





Anyway, the sun is up now, so I'm off.

Haere Mai!

Water, water, water.

Hello all, thought I would try getting up way before the other internet free loaders at the beach and voila: a new blog uploaded in less than 24 hours!

As you can see Molly and I went body boarding last weekend. 

We are still in the first days of spring, so although it is hot in the sun, the wind is still cool and the seawater is cold. This means that even with a wettie (NZ for a wetsuit - most modern NZ slang consists of adding an ie or y to the end of a shortened word) , it is about the same as UK in the summer.

You can see how cold it is from the facial expressions!

Despite the temperature, you can see that Molly was very keen.

This picture is actually her running out as it was so cold!

Nevertheless, we persevered with trying to catch a wave.

The dudes amped

But finally you can see the kooks were pumped.

Molly sends her love to all in the UK.

As does Loo as well.

We had a lovely walk in the evening.

Molly took us to the RipCurl shop to see the picture she did for a competition.

Well, that's the blog properly up to date. We are off to a beach walk in aid of the breast cancer charity in a couple of hours and then I think it might be body boarding time again. Look out for an update soon,

Adios Dudes!

Earthquakes, wind and rain Vs the joy of using technology!

Firstly my apologies for the severe delay in uploading this blog. I began writing it over two weeks ago and it was full of spelling mistakes as I was sat in the car on the beach road (to get a free internet connection!) and Dolly, the Mazda was being buffeted around by the storms. It  is small consolation to be told that we never have storms like that, the same consolation as being told that the last earthquakes were 30 years ago! The upside to the rain is that we have incredible rainbows!
Unfortunately the beautiful pictures are slightly spoilt as Molly believes that she is a girl from the hood, rather than one who just happens to own a sensible jacket with a hood!




 On top of all that my freebie internet connection has been suffering from the influx of holidaymakers all trying to connect. I gave up again last week after the third failed attempt.




I have been in Gisborne this week. Apparently I experienced an earthquake whilst I was there. I can honestly say that I felt nothing- typical male, I hear you say!








It may not look far on the map, but this was a 4.5 hour drive, including an hour and a half through the Opotiki to Gisborne hinterland: a deep gorge, with no phone connection and no sign of any civilisation! That is when you realise that this is such a young country.

Anyway, Molly has started school at Mount Maunganui Primary.

Her concerns about having to go back to primary (as the school year here runs from January) were alleviated by her route to school being a walk along the beach, the lack of uniform and the swimming and surfing during sports lessons!

Unfortunately, line dancing seems to come with the package as well: bang goes the girl from the hood's street cred!

20th September saw my 38th birthday celebrations. O.K. maybe a little higher. I felt the magic may have disappeared from our marriage, when I was texted on the way home from work to pick up a cake and some candles for my self. But no, it takes very little to keep this old man happy....... as you can see!

I'm not going to risk any larger blog as I think it will be tempting fate, there will be a plague of locusts descending upon the mount. But if this does finally manage to upload, I will be back on very soon. Thanks for your patience!