Omahu Lodge Auckland

Hi everyone at home,

We are relaxing in the B&B and sipping some NZ Sauvignon Blanc and getting our strength up to walk to the pub for dinner.

We both had a very long sleep last night and then enjoyed a very good breakfast at the B&B with some other guests from Canada, Holland and Belgium. We were the oldest, not your typical B&B.

Today was our day to explore Auckland ...

We were lucky enough to be invited to our first New Zealand Halloween party. We had a fantastic time trick or treating, bobbing for apples and getting covered in flour! We hope you enjoy the photos.

We were so exhausted at the end of the evening, Lucy and Dan collapsed in bed while Jeff and I fell asleep watching the rugby!

Jeff was up bright and early ready for his first day. The uniform looked smart and we will post a photo very soon.

The day was spent meeting everyone in the team and getting to grips with the basics. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be spent on a course so further time in the office won't happen until Friday.

Jeff seemed happy on his return ...

... dealership offering a wide range of marine products and accessories. Auckland Marine Center. Hauraki Plains Motors specialise in new & used farm machinery, arine outboard motors and if you require any type of Mechanical repairs or Mechanical servicing, we have just the team for the job.

Bensemann Boating are specialists in servicing both inboard and outboard motors and have recently opened a new servicing and supply facility at the Westpark Marina, in Hobsonville ...

... t see much point to go out. Instead I explored the airport. It's amazing how big and quiet at the same time it is! Nobody runs around, no stress and everybody smiles and is very helpful to each other. They have lots of trees inside, artificial rivers (with fish), waterfalls, free internet and computers everywhere plus armchairs with foot massage (all free too!). After a shower and sleep at the airport lounge I took the plane to Auckland.

Finally on Friday ...

... within an hour of each other. They arrived on the 31st. So see, its not so bad, you leave on a Friday morning and arrive on Sunday morning (but get the time back when you return).

Brian and I had a big day ahead of us even without the Mom's coming. We got up early and headed to the BIG car market in hopes of selling Miles. We had a good number of people interested, Brian even took some people on test drives. All ...

... and spend longer in the places we liked so much and to go that bit further to places we just couldn't fit in. I'd definitely recommend NZ though, it has everything you could want from a destination and even in Autumn it was so much more milder than we expected. It's so diversified and compact that you can see so much in such a short space of time. We'll be back again and next time we'll be driving around!

... to get us from A to B and that's OK for us.. ;-} For now... On that note I must add that there are one other reason we are happy to have reached NZ. This is of course that this place is a no accident zone; they have no snakes or spiders, stingers or other unpleasant Australias super duper dangerous animals. We are here now, in another country with no really strange deathly mega-poisonous buggers that will mess with me (it somehow always seems to ...

... tune plays does have its appeal :P Whenever the Jaws tune played Trude would just HAVE to look behind her JUST IN CASE!!! The full name of the place is Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter & Underwater World and that was made real by us going on a little automated tour in a modified Snowcat (a vehicle designed to traverse open icey plains) past groups of King Penguins. It started off rather cheesy though with going ...

... much, we hike, except on this boat you could not.   First of all, there were metal railings that made it impossible to sit on a side.  Secondly, there were no foot straps to keep you from falling out.  It was amazing how fast we were going, and how far we were heeling over. If we had been in Dad's sailboat, I'm pretty sure that we would have flipped. I guess the 14 tons of lead that was part of our keel was doing its job. On our way into the harbor, we saw two Lasers (very small ...