Friday 13 February 2009

Is it warm in here or what?

Bloomin nora, it's been pretty damn muggy over here recently. We've had the fan on pretty much all the time at home. We've been assurd this isn't totally normal conditions. The night of 22 degrees and 100% humidity wasn't much fun a few days ago!

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10556519

To the beach again me thinks.

James
x

Thursday 5 February 2009

So, New Year.......(pics added!)

This one will be a bit more brief, due to the fact I'm writing it at work, and that I've been putting it off cause I'm lazy. So, I might start posting more frequent, shorter blogs from now on. Or I might just keep doing the same, who knows - not me for sure.

So I&D came back from Oz, we stayed at ours for one night then set off to the Coromandel for the few days over new years. Stayed at a place called Cooks Beach on a campsite. The place was packed, loads of different ages milling around the place. Cooks Beach is a small residential place really, mostly holiday homes and a campsite and a small shop. The campsite atmosphere was really nice; the kids watched films projected on a sheet draped between the climbing frame, whilst the adults got merry around their tent villages.

Anyway, NYE afternoon we walked along a coastal path to two different beach coves. The first, Stingray Bay to do some snorkelling, the second, Cathedral Cove, to do some sun bathing and swimming. The snorkelling was quite surreal due to an airplane acrobatics team doing either a show or rehearsing in the sky above us. So, we' take a break from peering at the crayfish hiding under the rocks to watch planes doing loop the loops - sweet! We spent NYE night on the beach, drinking Summer Ale and sparkling Boysenberry wine, watching kids launching fireworks out of their hands in to the sea. Quite impressive, if not a little dangerous.

New Years Day we woke reasonably early, had a bacon butty, and went to the beach - had a swim, tried to lay in the sun but it was too hot, so sat in the tree shade. In the afternoon we drove to Hot Water Beach, which turned out to be packed!! At low tide you can dig a shallow pit near to a natural hot spring, then bake in the pool hoping for a bit of sea water to come along to cool it down. It was worth the journey though, as some dolphins (about 4 of them) turned up and mingled with the swimmers in the surf, and one of the dolphins surfed a wave in, which looked ace!

We drove back to Auckland on the 2nd, so I&D could get their flight back to blighty that night. Send off was fish and chips with a summer ale, followed by one last hot tub, before dropping them off for their short trip back home.

So that was New Years, uber brief version! Big thanks to Iain and Donna for coming out to spend the holiday season with us. Hopefully they've bigged up NZ to everyone else so we get more visitors (maybe some permanent?).

I'll try to 'blog' more often now, but I'm not promising owt!



James

xx