Goat Island

Our friend Kira had told us about Goat Island after her visit out here a few years back. She told us all about how pretty it was, the clear blue sea and the glass bottomed boat tours and how you could go kayaking or snorkelling and feed the fish from your hand. It all sounded very nice, so when we came out here in June 2006 we thought we'd stop for a look. Unfortunately there was a big storm that day so it wasn't at it's best to say the least:


Still, that was in the middle of the Southern hemisphere Winter, so that wasn't altogether surprising. Knowing that Dad and Gill were coming out here on their round-the-world trip shortly after we arrived this time, we suggested that we meet up with them. They were staying just outside Matakana, about an hour North of Auckland and just down the road from Goat Island, so we thought we could all go for a little visit there. However the weather had different ideas, and despite it being Summer this time, you'd have a hard time telling the difference:


So instead we scurried off to Matakana and had yummy food in the patisserie there- highly recommended. At least it was warmer this time though as you can tell by my shorts.


The next day we went to the Matakana farmer's market which was very good- all sorts of lovely produce and a little band playing. Sadly though the rain was still tipping down so we jumped in the cars and headed back to Auckland and a nice cup of tea at Dillan's.

Maybe we'll try another trip up there sometime- third time lucky perhaps?

Back to the Chinese Lantern Festival

This was our first weekend in NZ on Sunday 24th Feb, so you can see I've got a bit of catching up to do!

Each year they hold a Chinese lantern festival in Albert Park in Auckland to mark the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations. This was the ninth year it's been held. The 2008 Lantern Festival welcomes the Year of the Rat in the Chinese zodiac. Since the Han Dynasty (206BC-221AD), the Chinese have celebrated the Lantern Festival on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar calendar.

Nat and I went down with Dillan and his lodger Anna and bumped into some of Dillan's other friends there. We had noodles from one of the many stalls then went for a walk around the park looking at the lanterns, which seem to be made from silk stretched over a wire frame. I'm sure they'd have originally been oil or candle lanterns, but now they're electric!

Feels like Heaven

Duder Regional Park- this place is just beautiful. Just over half an hour outside Auckland and you're into the most amazing rolling countryside. Beatiful green hills in incredible folds show just what a young country this is, dropping down to cliffs and rocky harbours, sandy beaches and turquoise seas.

According to the website 'In the 14th century, this was the first place in the Waitemata Harbour to be visited by Tainui canoe. Its crew went ashore and harvested forest foods, which led to the peninsula's name - Whaka-kai-whara meaning "to eat the bracts of the kiekie vine". ' Well lucky old them, because they found a little piece of paradise.

We took along a picnic and walked to the old Maori Pa site (fort) at the end of the peninsula, where we sat for a while just enjoying the view and the fantastic weather. At this rate I might even get a suntan!

I don't like cricket, Oh No!

Well, as the song says, we loved it! Even Nat, who is an avowed cricket hater!

We drove down on Saturday with Dillan, to Sneddon Park in Hamilton, to watch England play the NZ Black Caps on the fourth day of the second test (I think! See, you can tell I'm not much of a cricket fan either!) Hamilton is just over an hour South of Auckland so we didn't have to get up early and had beautiful weather for the day.

We took a picnic with us (though we forgot the picnic rug!) and sat on the bank surronding half the pitch soaking up the very chilled atmosphere and cheering on our boys. I'll leave it to you to decide who that means we were supporting now that we've jumped ship.

England were in bat and put up a reasonable defence to start off with, though didn't quite maintain the standard and ended the first innings with a fairly respectable two hundred and something, though that still left them one hundred and something behind the Kiwis.

At lunchtime the pitch was opened so people could take their kids on and have a quick knock-about, which was great fun and typical of the laid-back atmosphere. Dillan and I took the opportunity to go and watch some of the bowling practice going on.

We left at teatime with the Kiwis having got off to a bad start in ther second innings, and listening to the radio on the way home we heard the NZ team all but collapse. On Sunday morning the Kiwi collapse continued and they were soon all out, giving England a genuine chance of a win. Of course that was not to be as we had an even worse second innings, all out for sixty-something handing victory to the home side.

Still we had a lovely day out and a nice picnic in the sun! :-)

Time flies when you're having fun!

Well, crikey, we've been here two weeks today and I haven't got round to updating this- told you I'd be rubbish!

Mind you, we have been busy. We landed on Monday 18 Feb and our old friends Dillan and Sarah met us at the airport. We've been staying at Dillan's house since then and getting to know the area a bit, looking at houses to buy or rent, cars to buy and jobs to get, as well as meeting up with Dad and Gill who were in NZ on their world tour, supporting Dillan at the Ironman (which he did in just over 11 hours- well done Dill!), getting over jet-lag, going to the Auckland Chinese lantern festival (that's the piccy!) and lots of other stuff, so that's my excuse!

Anyway, we've taken lots of photos, but I haven't got most of them onto my laptop yet, so I'll do that in the next couple of days and try to get this a bit more up to date! Suffice to say we like New Zealand so far and are having a lovely time :-) That's all for now.

Just keep swimming

Only our second day here and already Dillan's trying to get me back into silly triathlon type things! The 'Stroke and Stride' series is apparently New Zealand's most popular swim/run race series (which begs the question how many nutters are there in this tiny country of around four million people who actually enjoy this sort of thing!) You can read all about it here.

Dillan's doing really quite well, having got points in all the races so far this season and is in the top ten in his age group, so could be in with a chance of getting a top five placing. This race was a 500m swim followed by a 5km run, and was Dillan's last race before his Ironman down in Taupo on 1st March.

Dillan had a really good race- despite getting swum over in the melee at the start (a hazard of mass-start swims) he had his best 5km run ever and his best overall time of the series. Nat and I in the meantime sat on the beach and cheered him on while enjoing the evening sunshine :-)

The countdown has begun

Well, we're almost there! Two days to go and we'll be on a plane somewhere between here and New Zealand.

I picked Nat up from Heathrow yesterday morning after she'd flown back from Dubai, and we got the last few details of our application sorted out before sending it off by special delivery. Finding an envelope big enough was interesting as we had a wad of papers about two inches thick to send back, but it went off and was delivered today (I checked online- I like that you can do that!).

So now it's just a case of waiting to see how long they take to process it. At the moment the Immigration New Zealand website says the London branch is working with a three and a half month backlog, so it could be a while! On the other hand, if I can get a job offer they'll put our application to the front of the queue and it should be done in a month or so, so here's hoping.

In the meantime, we have a flight at 14:25 on Saturday from Heathrow to Auckland via Los Angeles. We're going that way as we get twice the normal luggage allowance (46 Kg each) so we're taking our bikes in great big padded bags so we can get straight into the healthy lifestyle and start enjoying ourselves. My sisters Jane and Helen are meeting us with their families at the airport to see us off, so that will be really nice, though I'm sure a tear or two will be shed.

We're not looking forward to the 24+ hours flight, but Air New Zealand are supposed to be good, so hopefully it wont be too horrible! I always hate the headphones on planes, and the fact that you have to turn the volume up so high that you deafen yourself just to be able to hear the films, so we both have a pair of little earphones that also block out the noise. You can pay a fortune for similar things, but I found some Koss Spark Plugs for £9 and they get good reviews, so we'll see how we get on. I'll put an update on here to say if they're any good.

Well, that's about it for now. Popping down to Brighton tomorrow to take a few bits and pieces down for Nat's family and check on our redirected post, then back to do a final pack and reshuffle of our bags, then a good night's sleep before the flight on Saturday... watch this space :-)