Water Water Everywhere

So it's now 7pm friday 12th. We got back from our scenic and for some eventfull tour an hour or so ago. We went South from Auckland hugging the coast around the Coromandel as far as Whakatane (remember what I said about WH sounding like F!!) then into the centre of the Island to lake Taupo and back to Auckland. Digs were on the whole pretty good and run at about $90-100 per night for a room or $130ish for a two bed apartment and at $2.50 to the pound seemed ok.

One of the reasons for going down the coast was to look up an old friend from Purton who moved out to Ohope Beach about 3-4 months ago with his wife Sue. Fergi was a flight engineer from Lyneham when we first met him as a biker many moons ago. He married Sue (an Aussy but we won't hold that against her) (especially as he now has this site address and is probably reading this as well as you) They have an apartment on Ohope beach but have done a one year house swap with Fergi's place in Purton. It's not a pleasent place to visit especially as they have a whole road and 20mtrs of grass between them and the beach, and the prospect of having two wet bathrooms to clean just filled me with horror. Town for them is just over the hill, which is busy falling into the sea and the Volcano 15 miles off shore is active !! I really do envy them their current lifestyle. What they do at the end of the year is still an unwritten chapter but will probably involve extensive European travel I suspect.

Sometime around this part of the journey Rose managed to find the only venomous creature in NZ which promptly bit her on the toe!! We think it was a Katipo which is related to the Australian Redback and the Black Widow!! so an hour or so yesterday was spent finding out how good the NZ NHS is! Rose now rattles with pills and has a vague ointment smell about her but all else seems ok again.

Taupo this morning was spent retrieving Pumice stone from the beach (better than sweets for colleagues (and free)) and trying to get a hole in one on a floating green moored in the lake. I hit the green 3 times out of ten but didn't get any prizes. Still better then the guy next to me who threw the club, probably unintentionally, into the lake instead of the ball.

Most of the area around Taupo is geo thermic and some houses have boreholes which supply all their heating needs, how strange is that? Rose wanted to see some molten lava, but we thought that wouldn't be a good thing. Loads of mud pools and hot springs, including a beach where you can dig a hole in the sand at low tide and lay back in a hot water pool as a hot spring runs out into the sea.

Also quite impressive was the Hooka falls, used for hydro electrics further up stream and flowing from lake Taupo it has channeled into a small gorge and flows at 160m3/second, whichis about 32,000 gallons, you wouldn't want to fall in there.

so that's another week done, 7 days from now we'll be approaching Singapore on the way home.

Dave's off fishing for the weekend so I'll be shopping with the ladies in Auckland, rather than drive we might take the local ferry which drops you in the town centre, what a good idea that would be for Swindon!!!

laters

M

Having a Mooch & Look see (with a suprise thrown in !!)

So it's been a while since I've had a chance to write anything, so a bit of catching up to do.

Rose and I took off with Helen's car to do some sight seeing around the area north of Auckland. Starting along the east coast and heading up toward 90 mile beach. One thing to remember over here is that WH in a name is pronounced F (next week we're going to WHakatana!!) and does that make it FSmiths instead of Wh Smiths???

There is some really beautiful scenery and lots of it, with a speed limit of 60mph (100kph) you get time to have a look around as you go. And the natives seem friendly enough. Most requested drink is a flat white (frothy coffee) at about 80p a go it seems churlish not to really. And the favourite food are pies. Every town has it's own bakery and they all fresh cook pies each day, but I still can't get my head around steak and cheese, although it doesn't taste quite as bad as it sounds.

Anyway loads more places to see with the occasional overnight at about $80 - 100 including breakfast for us both. Currently we're working on $2.50 to the pound. Best place we found was the Bay of Islands where we hopped a ferry to the tourist trap of Russell, highly appropriate since we're staying with the Russels anyway.

A quick turn round the top of the island at 90 mile beach, which is actually about 57kms but is size really that important? Rose managed to disturb a bee out for a swim and stood on it, the bee's response was predictable, but despite my offer to pee on her foot (or is that jellyfish stings?) a wade through salty water seems to have taken care of it. We took some posed photos of the speed limit sign as you go onto the beach , 100km, which seemed odd, and the rather rusty Nissan parked at the low water mark. This serves to remind people that the sand isn't as firm as it may seem.

From there back down the west coast and through the Waipoua Forest where there are some massivley impressive trees called Kauri. Tese things have to be seen to be believed. 30m+ around the trunk and almost the same distance to the first branch, dead straight. Apparently they are a type of pine but mightily impressive. So we felt we had to look into the Kauri museum on the way down. A lot of these trees were felled for the timber trade at the turn of the century but they are now protected unless it's licensed felling, so they've set up a museum based on the logging industry. The more expensive Kauri is taken from the swamps where they fell several hundred/thousand years ago. The trees are recovered, kiln dried and then used for furniture, including a 4 person hot tub built for a japanese company.

So there we are strolling across the car park 13000 miles from home when a young lady approaches us and says hello, which would normally be a tad odd, except it was Kelly who was one of Sam's bridesmaids 2 years ago!!!!. She took VR from Zurich in Swindon, sold up and has been touring the globe ever since so it is a small world after all.

So from there a steady mooch back to Auckland for Thurs evening and our main souvenier? A$40 parking ticket for parking facing the wrong way in a two-way street. (We might tell Helen about it before we leave)

Last Friday Kevin, Paul son from home who works for Sounds music shops as a director? tok me off to play a round of golf at The Grove, which is the normal home to the NZ Open. Not a long course but one you had to think about a bit, I managed to go round in 93 scoring 33 stableford points which I was very pleased with, sorry, chuffed to bits really.

The weekend spent pottering and a day out on the boat, we caught loads of small fry about 6inches long but not leagl to keep for the pot and I got one large snapper, which when lightly cooked in butter was lovely!!

Barbie and beers at Helen's sister's last night and now busy packing for a tour of the South of the North, if that makes sense, so hopefully add some more next weekend when Dave will be away for 2 days fishing the NZ National finals (some thins will never change)

laters

M
09.30 08/11/04 NZ (23C !!!!!!!!) bloody hot!!