Quest Matakana

... by the time I am retiring! Blink and the day will be gone!

With the move into the house and the unpacking of the many boxes, Lucy's birthday preparations this year were very last minute. I can not remember a birthday when it has been rushing around the day before! At least we had bought some of her pressies for her during our stay at Disney World, and what a good choice they were, seeing as though she is now Tink mad!

She was up ...

... Neben dem Kauribaum fuehlten wir uns dann echt winzig (s. Fotos)...

Farn hat hier uebrigens eine besondere Bedeutung:
Wenn Farn waechst, liegt er zuerst in Form eine Spirale vor. Entrollt sich diese Spirale, hat der lange Stiel viele kleine Spiralen, die sich wiederrum entrollen usw. Farn bezeichnen die Maori als "koru" und die Pflanze/Spirale steht als Symbol fuer Leben und Geburt.

Weiter gings Richtung Warkworth (ein winziger Ort, in dem es rein gar nichts gab ...

... and caught my first glimpse of the Tasman sea. Hiked down to Mosquito bay and walked along a black sand beach. Headed back towards Goat Island marine reserve and saw the pacific ocean along an amzing beach. Cooked up some chicken penne alfredo, had a couple beers and a good chat.

... Along the flat i was struggling to do 7Km/hr (walking speed is 6km/hr) so it would have been almost faster to get off and push. Certainly safer. The wind absolutely streaming at me at what i guess to be well over 100km/hr. The danger level was definitely up there. Quite a few times i was blown into the ditch or out onto the road, luckily nothing coming. I think the motorists could see the difficulty i was having and were nearly all giving me a wide birth. Yes definitely ...

... as an unknown customer, it seems that we missed out on few things which I am sure won't happen again. After an hour or so we head home to find that the water tank has leaked all over the floor. Luckily Rob had organized cover for his shift tomorrow so now his day off will be spent replacing the tank. Gutted! Overnight all we can do is stop the in-flow and stick a bucket under the tank to catch the dripping water. Drip! Drip! Drip! If its not one thing....

... as well. Couple this with random one-way systems in the city centre and the whole thing is a frigging nightmare! So, we got to our camp-site at Takapuna and, pardon my french, but it's *****. That is the first proper sweary word I've used so far (I think) so it gives you an idea of the complete dejection we felt when we got into our 'tourist flat'. I say dejection, we laughed maniacally for about 30 minutes after we got in the dump at the ...

... overflowing cups full of icecream!! Holy ****! It was ******* everywhere - it was hilarious! It was all over his hands and after he sat down and looked at me, I also realised it was on his glasses! I almost wet myself! Best icecream ever!! The sparrows that flocked over to see us thought so too! And that it pretty much Takapuna until tomorrow - although we are staying in a different campsite tomorrow so stay tuned!!

... was not air conditioned. No one seemed to notice the lack of air conditioning. Why would they, they drove the 2 + miles to the store not walked as we had. As we walked around the store, I felt a distinctive cool breeze; I looked up and saw a couple coming out of a door to another room. Above the door was a sign, "Cool Room". This was where they where the beer and mixers were stored. Even thought we were going for Whiskey to take back to ship, we couldn't resist ...

In the morning we went to Cape Rodney - a marine reserve more commonly referred to as Goat Island after the island just off shore. This is renowned as a snorkelling beach and was the busiest beach we had visited while in New Zealand by far. The snorkelling was a bit of a disappointment. There were shoals of some quite large fish (maybe 40cm long) but nothing very ...

... 4m in diameter. Kauri trees are not the tallest in the world but they produce the largest volume of timber per tree with long straight trunks of wide girth. In the event, we saved ourselves the 100km+ detour to the west coast because we came across a sign to Puketi Kauri Forest just north of Kerikeri on the SH10. We took the gravel road to this forest and the short board walk at the Manginagina Scenic Reserve through the forest to view the trees. The board walk ...