Part 20 – Sun, Surfing & Snow-Capped Mountains

Can you believe it’s October already??! It’s surreal. I am sure that when we emigrated we also went into some sort of time travel tunnel because the days, weeks and months seem to go so much quicker over here! It really is crazy.

 

The Asset Sale Protest in Auckland

 

The Asset Sale Protest in Auckland

 

We have lived on the North Shore for around 4 months now and still absolutely love it. Somehow the weather always seems to be better here than in the CBD (not that we ever lived in the CBD, but I work there). About a month after we moved we headed to my work’s ball...the theme was the Diamond Jubilee and it was held in the viaduct at the events centre. It was amazing – loads of British themed things, like 2 London guards on the door, an amazing brass band, the colours were red and green and everyone got dressed up in fancy clothes. It was a great opportunity to dress up nicely, it’s widely known that they don’t really do pomp and circumstance here...you fit in whatever you’re wearing – a Saturday night out can be had just as easily in flats as it can in heels. It’s probably more dressy up in Auckland than where we used to live – Invercargill – but nothing like in the UK where if you were out for a big night with the girls you went all out in dresses and heels! I like that you don’t have to get dressed up if you don’t fancy it but the ball was a great excuse to go all out.

 

Diamond Jubilee Ball

 

Diamond Jubilee Ball

 

The day after the ball the OH (other half) had gone to pick the car up and I was relaxing on the sofa, sleepily easing off the effects of the night before when I decided to look up pets on the SPCA website (those who know me in real life, know that this wouldn’t be an unusual thing for me to do!) Then I decided to take a look on TradeMe to see if there were pets on there (TradeMe is NZ’s equivalent to eBay...we have eBay as well but TradeMe is HUGELY more successful here) and sure enough there were lots of pets on there. So I started to look through and found 2 beautiful long haired cats...I had a feeling our landlady would be fine with us having a cat as there’s a cat flap in our front door (something of a giveaway), so I waited for the OH to return and broached the subject with him. He was all for it so I sent a text to our landlady who was happy with it too...yey!

One of the cats had only been listed that same morning so I contacted her owner and sure enough she was still available so I arranged to pick her up the following day after work. I was like a child at Christmas on the Monday....so excited about getting her. We went to get her and she was so beautiful, I picked her up and she was more than happy being cuddled so we took her home. It turns out she was originally a rescue from the SPCA and was given to a child for her birthday present, but then the family had to move house and couldn’t take her with them so they gave her to their neighbour (the people we had her from), but their cats just hated her. They’d given it a few weeks but said it was unfair to her and the other cats so had to re home her. She was 2 years old and her name was Alice...well that felt a little weird to me as I have a friend called Alice and didn’t think it really suited her so I renamed her. Her full name is now Princess Tigerlily but you’ll be glad to hear that we have shortened it to Lily, she loves her new name :)

Apart from miaowing a lot at night (just getting into a new routine, I guess) she had settled in well and was using the cat flap to come in and go out as she pleased. About a month after we took her in we went out for the evening, leaving her on the sofa and when we ended up staying at a friend’s house. This isn’t a big deal as she only eats dry food so wasn’t reliant on us for feeding. When we got home the following morning she was out, this wasn’t unusual. But as the hours went on it was very out of character for her not to come back at all. Day turned to night and she still wasn’t home. Naturally, I was very worried about her. As the days went on I shed lots of tears and was hoping that some old dear had just taken a shine to her and she was living in the lap of luxury. I listed her as missing on a website called Pets on the Net, also put her on TradeMe in the Lost & Found section, printed A5 flyers and posted them in 80 houses in the neighbourhood, contacted the 2 out of hours vets locally and registered her as missing with them, rang around loads of the rescue places and sent them pics too – just in case she was picked up as a stray....I just did everything I could think of. I even called the local council and asked if they’d picked up a deceased cat which matched her description. Luckily they hadn’t – and I had a gorgeous lady from the council call me regularly from that date on, asking if she’d come home. I’ve never experienced customer service quite like it!

Then a week after she went missing I found her collar out on the road at the end of our drive which was odd – it had been ripped off which made my imagination run wild and I was convinced she had had a scare and run outside her territory so didn't know how to get home. Throughout the whole time she was missing I also had a feeling that she was stuck somewhere.

Then...12 days after she'd gone missing we went to bed and the OH literally leapt out of bed after 20 mins or so and was listening by the window...and there she was...in the garden miaowing. She crept in and was really timid and flinching at loud sounds, looked quite thin and I could feel her bones in her neck & hips, also had a broken tail – it was all limp and hanging down so she looked really sad! :( But she was home and that was the main thing :)

 

Lily - when we first had her...

 

...and now....sans tail (still just as beautiful!)

 

I called around local vets who quoted me everything from $600-$1000 to have her tail amputated. I don’t usually focus on price when it comes to vet services but this seemed very very extreme to me: it's not an essential limb and she had no feeling / pain in it so it wasn't a necessary operation, I just wanted it out of the way as it was a dead weight for her. Finally I had a quote from a vet who said $280-$380 which was much more reasonable. I went to the vets and was surprised at what I found, they had a couple of their own cats wandering around, even a dog came in too at one point...and I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake. The vets I have always been to have been extremely clinical and smelled of bleach, not other animals! But my fears were quickly diminished when I saw how much this vet clearly loved animals, Lily was more than happy to be picked up by her and the vet calmed my nerves as I left her with them. I had also read 2 reviews online which talked about their clear love for animals.

It was the best example of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ that I have ever experiences, I went to pick her up at the end of the day and Lily was a bit groggy from the anaesthetic but they’d also used a slow release 2 week antibiotic injected into her so that I didn’t have to feed her tablets or anything. Their mission statement online says ‘We strive for a high quality medical service at an affordable cost. We have a passion for animals and their well being’ and they truly do. They are an amazing vet service who even called me a few days after Lily’s operation to ensure that Lily was doing ok and that I was happy with her progress. Lily’s new bobtail healed with no dramas and 2 weeks later she had her stitches removed and was allowed out again. A bobtail actually suits her - it will look even better when all her fur has grown back...it's been 3 or 4 weeks already and it's coming back slowly but because her hair is soooooo long, it will take ages before it looks 'normal' again! A huge thank you to Northcote Vets – I will never use any other vet services for my Lily!

Since I last wrote I have also stepped well and truly into my 30s – I am now 31 and I was more surprised at turning 31 than I was turning 30! We rented a beach bach at a place called Mangwhai Heads – a very quiet place which a lovely beach – and spent the weekend there. As me & the OH share the same birthday we have to ensure the day meets both of our needs (I wanted to run a half marathon on the morning of our bday but that was apparently a non negotiable ‘no’!!) Our birthday is the first day of Spring here in NZ – much better than the first day of Autumn that it used to be in the UK!

A couple of weeks ago we also made our first trip to Waiheke Island for dinner. Eight of us went altogether and had a great time eating great food and drinking fab wine at Te Whau vineyard – it’s highly recommended. Our waiter noted that most of our table was British and we were excited to hear that his partner was in the group Frankie Goes to Hollywood! Amazing! Frankie says Relax and we were doing just that! :)

The sun setting over the city, view from Te Whau vineyard, Waiheke

Breathtaking Waiheke views. Rangitoto volcano in the distance

 

I also took part in my first volunteer day with work last month - we helped out at The CanTeen event called The Crank. Basically it was a 12 hour RPM indoor cycling event where team members took turns doing an hour long RPM session run by the Les Mills instructors. We were manning drinks stands, meeting and greeting people as they came in, registering people, etc and I also did an hour on the bike for one of our work teams. The session was hard going, those instructors are machines! but it was a great event and over 1000 people cycled through the day which ran from 8am - 8pm. Cancer is something that is dear to my heart; my nan died of breast cancer when she was in her 50's and a good friend of the OH's passed away this year and he was only in his late twenties so it felt good to be doing something to raise money for the teenagers (and families of) who suffer from this horrible illness.

CanTeen event - The Crank - inside The Cloud, Auckland

No other big news here really, there have been a couple of earthquakes in the North Island this month but they have caused no real damage and we didn’t feel them up in Auckland (so don’t worry mum & Dad!!) – there was actually a nation-wide earthquake drill in NZ last month as part of New Zealand Shakeout (the earthquake public education campaign) to ensure that everyone knows what to do if the worst happens. You can find out more here if you’re interested.

I just want to finish by saying how much I truly love New Zealand, the title of this post was alluding to that. It only takes a day of sunshine for me to realise how lucky I am to live here and this day happened when I was in Wellington for work. I had facilitated a session in the Wellington office and was heading back to the airport to catch my flight to Auckland and the driver took me the scenic route to Wellington airport. The sky was blue, the sun was beating down and a large group of surfers were out in the sea lapping up the beautiful weather, while the snow capped mountains looked on in the distance – it really was one of those ‘wow’ moments ... and I didn’t have my camera with me. But to be fair, I have had loads of those ‘wow’ moments here and I have shared some of them below. You'll notice that a lot of these have the sea in them, because that's a natural beauty spot for me; but the terrain here really does have something for everyone! If you have never been to New Zealand I urge you to come – you will not be disappointed.

 

View of Auckand City from Mt Eden

 

Clear blue water at Eastern Beach

 

The gannet colonies, Muriwai

 

Lion Rock, Piha

 

Muriwai

 

A Praying Mantis

 

Rotoroa Island

 

Hole in the Rock, Rotoroa Island

 

The New Zealand sky



Part 16 - You Reap what you Sow

After a lovely 1st Christmas in New Zealand the OH (other half) went back to work on the 28th but my office was closed down until Jan 16th (although I opted to go back on the 9th). A lot of businesses over here close down completely for Christmas because there aren't many people around. Because It's Christmas and summer everyone takes their summer holidays and shoots off to Australia / Fiji / Samoa, etc. for a well deserved break. In the UK we always tended to work in between Christmas and New Year and it's the minority rather than the majority of businesses who tend to close down. So off he went to work and I got back into my 'pre-work' routine of running and cleaning for a few days. The weather here over Christmas was apparently the worst anyone can remember for years - saying that we're from Wales so we're used to a drizzly / snowy Christmas and rainy summers! To us the weather was fine. A bit drizzly but days of blazing sunshine too which suits us!

Then it was New Year's Eve and we had been asked if we wanted to go and see the New year in, in a place called Tauranga (pronounced Tow(like 'now' but with a 't')-wronga) as friends had chartered a boat. What a novel way to see in the New Year! We jumped at the chance. We left Auckland and hit the torrential rain which we had been seeing on the news (I think Auckland got off pretty lightly!). You literally couldn't see 100 yards in front of the car. It was actually quite scary as some people drive like idiots out here regardless of the weather / winding roads . There's an ongoing campaign to reduce the road deaths, including a TV advert which talks about 'staying in mantrol' and actually has the line "If we're not in full control of such a manly thing [as driving] then what does this all mean?" Since when has driving been 'manly'? Still...if it stops 1 accident then it has done a good job! The road fatalities here in comparison the, for example, the UK are staggering. According to Wikipedia the number of road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants (you have to take into account number of inhabitants because the population is dramatically different) is 3.59 for the UK and a huge 8.6 for New Zealand. On the side of many New Zealand roads there are signs stating the number of road deaths on that particular road in the past 3 months or so and they certainly make me think twice about speeding.

The view through the windscreen on the way to Tauranga

Anyway, I digress...so the weather was horrendous outside but it was so warm and humid as well. It felt like we needed a good storm to clear the air. Well....you know that feeling when it feels like a storm's a-brewing and you're just about to celebrate New Year on board a boat? No?? I do now! It's unnerving! We were driving along and the iPod was blaring through the stereo when the most appropriate song ever came on: Bob Marley - Satisfy My Soul. With the classic lines:

"Oh, please don't you rock my boat (don't rock my boat),

'Cause I don't want my boat to be rockin' (don't rock my boat)"

You gotta' love the 'shuffle songs' setting. We got to Andy & Heni's house in Tauranga and the rain was still lashing down. We got ready and congregated in the lounge to see that the rain had stopped! It was miraculous. We met up with the rest of our boat crew in a nice bar called Imbibe where we had some drinks and nibbles. I should probably mention here how we know these people: the OH met Andy via the British Expats Forum when he was looking for information way back in 2010 before he came out to look for work here. When he was here for a month on his own he met up with Andy (from Leeds) and they went for a night out - hence a new friendship began! His girlfriend Heni is from Slovakia and we got on like a house on fire. A couple called Tracy & Allan also came out on New Year's. The OH knows Allan from his home-town (how surreal?) and Allan lives here with his wife of 2 months Tracy who is Canadian, they are a great couple and again - we all just clicked. We also met up with lots of new people on New Year's Eve who were Andy & Heni's friends - Angela & John, Josh & Louise, Samantha & Dean, Dale and many more. They were a fabulous bunch and everyone got on really well! The we headed off to an awesome bar called Major Tom's which is set-up to look like an old lady's living room! There are all old couches and armchairs in there and loads of pictures on the walls. The boys loved that they had the old arcade game 'Pong' and took to the computer game with vigour! For the young 'uns reading this - you won't know Pong (I knew of it but it was slightly before my time!) but it's basically the simplest version of 2D tennis on a computer screen that I can ever imagine being invented. It was probably the height of technology when it first came out and if proof of how far our gaming has come in such a short space of time!

'Pong' in Major Tom's

After a couple of hours in Major Tom's we went to meet the boat. It's called The Luvboat II and is absolutely amazing! If you're in NZ and want a party on a boat - this is the boat for you! The top floor has a dance floor and pole - which the lads had great fun swinging around - and the bottom floor consists of a number of seating booths, karaoke and a bar. Captain Noel and hostess Natalie were absolutely perfect - nothing was too much trouble and they were very much an extension of our NY crew by the end of the night! We had a dance, a sing and a fair few drinks then all gathered on the top deck outside to watch the fireworks. It was a fantastic night.

The LuvBoat II

New Year Fireworks

At around 12:30am on New Year's day we were kindly dropped off at the Strand and off we went to a bar for more drinks, dancing and games of pool! If my memory serves me rightly we headed off home at about 3am. Trying to flag down a taxi was proving to be a complete nightmare so we headed to the nearest hotel and they called us a taxi from there. They were very helpful and invited us to sit on the chairs in the lobby while we waited. So we finally got home at about 4am after a fabulous New Year celebration.

New Year's Day certainly saw a few hangovers from our group...even while eating the king of hangover cures - a McD's - we had to keep stopping every few seconds while our stomachs decided how they wanted to process the junk we were putting in. But - it was nothing that a dip in the sea couldn't erase! So me & the OH went to Papamoa Beach, popped on our togs (swimmers) and had a few hours in the sea. It was the perfect start to 2012. The original plan was to go camping until the 3rd Jan but with the wet weather and an offer of bricks and mortar from Allan & Tracy we stayed with them instead. They have a lovely home in Tauranga and Tracy is a qualified masseuse who runs her own business from home where she has an additional building in the garden: it's amazing how you can create an aura of calm and serenity in one place and boy has she achieved it! We had a lovely evening with them and Tracy cooked a nice roast dinner (with champagne) for us all before an early night! The following afternoon we all headed down to Papamoa beach and spent a few hours in the sea and enjoying the New Year sun. When we got up the following day Allan asked "Have you seen the news?" which we hadn't as yet. When we got hold of a newspaper it turns out that there had been a 2 metre shark swimming quite close to people on Papamoa beach the day prior - when we'd been there! Some lamb roasts were falling from the rena into the sea and had attracted a number of sharks to the area. You can read the newspaper report here. A few people have told us since though that there are always lots of sharks in that area - they're not there to eat people, just swimming. I like the innocence of swimming with loads of sharks without knowing it - we're essentially in there domain, it's not like they sneak up on us in bars. Live & let live and all that jazz.

We headed back to a very sunny Auckland on 3rd January as the OH was back in work on 4th. On the Friday when he came home from work it was so warm that we decided to have a merry jaunt down to Cockle Bay for a swim! It was amazing jumping into the sea after a hot, humid afternoon. The sea was actually warm to walk into! I couldn't believe it when the OH said it was warm (he was the water tester) as he always says this to get me to go in but it really was like walking into a warm bath. I had never experienced it before - and that's certainly not the case in all parts of NZ. You usually feel the cold when you first go in but once you've submerged, it's OK and warm - but this was just perfect!

I was back in work from Monday 9th Jan - it was so quiet in the office as most people were back on the 16th but it was great to get back into routine and on top of some things before everyone else came back. I decided when I went back to work that I'd make a New Year's Resolution (albeit slightly delayed) to sit properly at my desk. I'm always sitting with my legs crossed up on my chair or sitting sideways (as if I'm side-saddle on a horse) and I don't think it's good for my back or my knees so I'm consciously trying to straighten my spine, lower my shoulders and put feet flat on the floor. It really does take a conscious effort and I've failed at it abysmally having only been back in work for 2 weeks. You should try it - you'll soon see how hard it is! Even sitting here writing my blog I find it hard to sit properly for half an hour!!

I have diagnosed myself with Illio-Tibial Band Syndrome (ITBS) which means that when I go running the outside of my knee is in absolute agony. I've had it periodically for years and thought it was runner's knee but it got really bad at the end of December so I looked into it and came to the conclusion that it's my illiotibial band that's causing the issue. After reading lots about it I've been doing a difficult stretch that I found on good old YouTube and it seems to be doing the trick despite some saying that trying to stretch it doesn't work. I went for a run yesterday morning and no pain last night or today which is a marked improvement from the end of December when I couldn't physically walk the day after running!

The weather in January seems to be somewhat sporadic still. It's been gorgeous for the past 3 days and then it rained this morning. Not dissimilar to the weather in the UK but it is actually warm here which is good! Living in Wales we were pretty much used to drizzle and when it was sunny or rainy it was usually pretty much the same weather (to varying degrees) throughout the whole of the UK (except Scotland who seem to live in their very own climate!) But here the weather can vary so dramatically from one place to the next. Over Christmas the news showed that there was extreme flooding in Nelson (North of the South Island) which caused so much damage it could take 10 years to put it right and this was a complete paradox to the news regarding Otago (central Southland) which detailed severe drought - not good for an area dependent largely on farming. So it's a bit strange for us to see all the micro climates quite evident - even when driving you can often see that there is a sheet of rain in front of you and you drive from dry into heavy rain.

Last weekend, in the hope of securing some sunshine we went camping to a place called Muriwai (pronounced moo-ri-why). It's only an hour away and is perfect for 2 nights soaking up nature. We headed there after work on Friday and when we arrived Ursula (my manager in work) & Dan (her boyfriend) were already set-up In the UK when we went camping with the Ooooodex crew it became something of a tradition that as people arrived the boys would help set-up the tents while the girls got the girlfriend a glass of wine. However, when I explained this to Ursula she explained that in their camping group it tends to be the other way around as one of her friends was a girl guide leader so the girls would set-up the tents...hmmm. So the OH and I were putting our new tent together and within 30 seconds I had cut my finger...I don't know how it happened, it just did. At that moment Dan appeared so I was absolved from my tent duties and settled on the bench with a drink while the boys did it. Now...this tent was supposed to be able to sleep four people. FOUR! Well, the queen sized air bed only just fit in it, let alone anything else so I thing that we may have been duped by some false advertising! It is basically a sleeping dome for TWO people - I am so glad we didn't buy the one intended for two people...one of us would have been sleeping on the picnic bench!

Our FOUR MAN tent

Then a game of Sequence ensued. If you haven't played this board game then I highly recommend it. It is board & card based and is extremely addictive! At about 9pm we all got a bit hungry and headed out in the car to find somewhere to have food. One thing to note about New Zealand here is that many places close quite early in the evening. If you're from the UK you'll be expecting restaurants to be open until the early hours of the morning and you won't find it here! It's nice because it makes you realise that the people who work at the food places have their own lives and quite rightly don't want to be working until silly o'clock to satisfy our untimely hunger but it can be a touch inconvenient as you will have noted from my previous blogs when moving house! McD's is 24 hours though so you'll always be able to resort to that if nothing else! Anyway, as we drove out of the camp-site the guy who owns it was locking the gate. He opened it to let us out and didn't offer any information to us about locking up. So Dan asked if we'd be able to drive back in later on to which the owner just replied 'No' and that was that - all the information we were privy to! After that he became appropriately known as 'Mr. No'. We decided to head into town anyway and just park the car up near the camp-site and walk back. We passed loads of food places which were all closed, the town seemed devoid of human life...and then tried one place before we resigned ourselves to a chip shop - a Thai restaurant. It was absolutely full of people - so this was where the whole town went on a Friday night! It was quite posh and we were all dressed in camping slouch clothes but they were happy to accommodate us. The food was absolutely divine - if you're ever in Kumeu and you're looking for a good restaurant then Golden Silk Thai comes extremely highly recommended! After we'd had our fill we headed back and played cards until about 1am when we decided it was time to hit the sleeping bags.

Saturday we woke up and Ursh & Dan had to head back into the city for a few hours so me & the OH put the mountain bikes in the van and headed up to Toi Toi café for breakfast. On the way there the heavens opened and we passed a guy who was hitch-hiking. So we picked him up and he asked if we'd been out on the bikes or if we were heading out. We said we were heading out and he told us of a bike track he'd been told about but had never tried. It was an official bike track and you had to turn down a lane that looked like someone's drive and lug your bikes over these HUGE concrete blocks to find it. Sop we dropped him off at his car and carried on to the café. Again - highly recommended, they have views of the sea; the service and coffee were fantastic and the food was gorgeous! The OH opted for a big breakfast and I stuck with my fave: eggs benedict with salmon. Perfect start to the day! Then we went off in search of this elusive bike track. It was fantastic - all downhill to start which was amazing (although I tend to panic and use my brakes but the OH was gone like a shot!) On the way back it meant some quite steep hills but it was well worth it. We had roughly 2 hours out cycling and it was nice and sunny for the whole time. It's so true that you reap what you sow: if we hadn't done a good deed in picking up the hitch-hiker then we'd never have known about it!

The view from Toi Toi café

The ominous start to the bike track

The lane access to the bike track

We headed back to the camp-site and straight to the beach where the OH donned his wetsuit and got in the sea with his body-board. I got cosy on the sand and watched, taking pics and enjoying my sport of choice: people watching. The waves on Muriwai beach are inconsistent and can be very dangerous. In fact, as a general rule the sea on the East Coast is generally calm (Pacific Ocean) and they have white sand beaches whereas the West coast (Tasman Sea) has black sand and is very unpredictable and can be ferocious. The North Island's west coast surf spots (Piha, Bethells and Muriwai) have the worst reputation for fierce currents but the East coast rips are harder to spot. You need to watch out for rips (you should be looking out for these anywhere really) which can drag you out if you panic. In the schools here, kids are taught all about rips but in the UK it would never make the curriculum!

A kite surfer on Muriwai Beach

With that in mind, I'll give you a short lesson on what I've learnt so far:

• Sometimes you can see the rip and sometimes you can't
• Surfers often use rips to their advantage - they can be used to take surfers out to where they need to be to catch the best waves (not that I'm advocating this!)
• Rips are the biggest killers in NZ waters: of the 14 people who have drowned in NZ since Christmas, at least 5 were killed after being caught in rips
• Swimmers die because they exhaust themselves fighting against the current. If you don't fight it and just tread water, you have an 80 to 90 per cent chance of the rip current conveyor belt returning you to shore in three to six minutes.

Rips are identified as:

• Calm patches in the surf with waves breaking either side
• Rippled or ‘criss-crossed' water
• Darker water due to depth or sand stirred up off the bottom
• Foamy water with debris extending beyond the surf break

If you are caught in a rip:

• Stay calm and conserve your energy
• If you are a weak swimmer, float with the current and try to swim parallel to the shore until reaching the breaking wave zone, then swim back to shore or signal for help.
• If you are a strong swimmer, swim at a 45 degree angle across the rip in the same direction as the current until you reach the breaking wave zone, then return to shore.

*For more info see the Waitakere Website & this info sheet

I don't want to scare anyone off and they're certainly not exclusive to New Zealand - far from it! Plus the beaches do have flags which you are encouraged to swim between as they're the lowest risk areas in which to swim. These red & yellow flags also indicate that there are Surf Life Saving NZ teams patrolling. These teams patrol specific beaches from October - April each year and consist of volunteers who devote their spare time to saving lives. It really is commendable and they are always welcome to receive donations :)

Anyway, after a short while on the beach it decided to rain again but we stuck it out for a while until the wind really picked up and after about an hour we went back to camp to freshen up and get some dinner! Then settled in for the night for a few drinks and many games of 'Oh, Hell!' and a new one called 'Presidents & Ar*eholes' - both again very addictive indeed! Sunday morning we awoke to the feeling of being suffocated. You know what it's like when you've had a few drinks and then sleep in a tent and the sun comes up really early and cooks your tent nicely so that when you wake up you feel like you've been stuck in the desert for days and desperately need water and air! We decided that tents should have a number of vent holes a sleeping height - like the portholes on a ship which you can lift up a little Velcro flap and just suck in some air when you first wake up - that would be genius!

Sunday we had a lovely breakfast cooked by Ursula and packed up the tents then we all headed off to grab a coffee and went for a nice long walk to see the gannet colonies on Muriwai beach and then had another walk along the beach itself and soaked in the vitamin D on offer :) In the afternoon we got a lovely ice cream and then headed back home ready for another week in work. It was a fabulous weekend and I felt so relaxed as is so often the case when I go camping and have zero access to technology - it's so refreshing.

A calmer looking Muriwai Beach

One of the Gannet colonies

This weekend we've had a very quiet one - did a bit of shopping yesterday and bought some helmets for cycling (it's illegal to cycle over here without a helmet!) and we made our first trip to the amazing 'English Corner Shop' in Onehunga (pronounced on-ee-hung-a although I like to pronounce it one-hunger in my head, it just tickles me). This was very very exciting for me - a pescetarian as they sell Quorn and it's the first taste I've had of it since moving here 7 months ago. So last night consisted of Quorn burgers with salad for dinner and today I have had Birds Eye Potato Waffles (they're waffly versatile) with Quorn bacon - I am in Quorn heaven.

One final update from me - and that's with regard to 'Tom'. He's certainly grown since we re-potted him and he's carrying loads of yummy tomato babies for us!! Yey!! Check him out and bask in his fruit-bearing glory.

My lovely Super'Tom' 

Check out his fruit babies!