BK's Pioneer Motor Lodge Mangere

... flach... gar nicht lustig
habe mich bis jetzt nur von weissbrot ernaehrt und mehr werde ich wohl auch nicht mehr herunter bekommen... bin super schlapp und fuehle mich wie... naja wie man sich halt so fuehlt...

seit meinem letzten eintrag ist nicht viel neues passiert, hier im ruhigen, einsamen parakai...
am sonntag ist hier immer "ruhetag", also keine arbeit... aber mit der vielen freizeit kann man hier ...

Our first proper weekend in Auckland was very busy. We spent Saturday morning and early afternoon looking at rentals and property to buy with not a lot of success and then ended up spending the rest of Saturday at Piha beach on the west coast. Such a beautiful and wild beach - just wish it had been a little warmer!

It was an ideal opportunity to blow the cobwebs away and gave Jeff and I a ...

... tell us all about the area
where we are staying and what to do in New Zealand in general. He is
quite the historian and gives us a DVD to watch: the New Zealand Wars
and a book about driving around NZ. After long hot showers we head
off to a neighborhood pub where we share a pot of NZ mussels,
butternut soup, and beer while listening to 2
pianists play the hits as the patrons sang along.

... laces. A neon orange top and big massive michelin man puffy silver shiny jacket - topped off with neon pink cap. I try conversation but all I get in return is that is "whale-ry sror". I was having a discussion about how hectic I found Tokyo and that New Zealand is positively snail pace in comparison. She answered as she did and apparently this was nothing to with the whale watching tour we were about to do - but Christian who'd been used to her banter having sat ...

... to stop at and take pictures of so it breaks up the time on the road. Plus New Zealand isn't that big of a country to begin with. Just after the volcanic crater we stopped at Cathedral Cove and went on a 45 minute walk through the jungle to arrive at this beautiful beach. There were all of these large rocks sticking up from the water and a sort of tunnel/ cove had been created out of rock along the beach. This was my first taste of the natural landscape and it was pretty exciting ...

... call a Fowler Fall. When I was a kid I have distinct memories of going for holiday hikes along winding rivers hoping to see what has almost been described as Niagra Falls only to be met with a tiny hose like trickle and the thought "Is that it?" Collapsing on a patch of green to munch on a cheese roll and quench my thirst by gulping down warm, flat, sandy lemonade that had been left over from the beach trip the previous day, solemn and unsatisfied by the damp rocky ...

... to fit him comfortably. I never realised for the first couple of weeks just what was going on, even though I'm usually sat opposite him I've got my MP3 player plugged in so I'm oblivious to what's going on. Once I noticed that he'd got the headset on but the earpieces were in fact positioned immediately above his ears rather than over his ears, strange I thought. The next day I paid more attention to his ritual of adjusting the headset ...

Our last two nights in the 'Hippie Campervan' took us to Shelly beach then on to Piha. Piha was a nice little town in a valley and on the beach. It's main focal point is Lion Rock which can actually look a bit like a lion if you stand in the right place and squint your eyes! We were pretty boring here if I'm honest. We did our laundry and read our books - not great blog reading I know! We ...

... in the hotel, which had a large
selection of cheeses, rolls, juices, fruits and cereals. They also had
the fabled vegemite which we kept seeing on menus, and it turned out to
be a condiment! It's got barley and yeast, so a solid form of beer ...