NOrth Head, with Grace too

So before Kare Kare (so really it should be first) we took Grace over to Devonport and up North Head to see the tunnels and the guns and the view back across the city where we'd been that morning. Despite the morning fog that lasted till midday, that's how you can tell it's winter, the sun came out to play a cracker of day for us all. Pete and i were chuffed as we want Grace to go back to London and tell our friends how warm and lushious enzed is and not all rain and thunder clouds, but it is winter afterall, miracles don't happen everyday! well, except this one, and the next :) I love new zealand.

Those smiles say, I just had eggs for breakfast, laughed at a bowl of latte, the suns come out, there's Mt Rangitoto, we're standing on a hill, we can see the sea, it's a good day.

What a view eh? On the other side of North Head you look out over Auckalofa, our silver city.

That's Devonport to the right below, with the ferry that takes you right into the viaduct.

you can see the NZ weather mustering up a typical sudden change with the rain cloud on the left of the flag pole and the clear blue skies on the right. The gun/ cannon thing is inactive incase you were concerned. North Head was used as a barrack to protect Aucklands harbour during the second world war. There are tunnels that run in and out of the hill, most of them still open to the public and excellent for touring at night with a torch and some wine.

Inside a tunnel below, Grace called this my own 'come towards the light' moment, but really the view framed by the hole was pretty amazing.

 

 

Pete and Grace in the tunnels, pretty amazing the layers of rock.

I forgot how cool it was to have North Head as a kid growing up. Grace pointed out that if it was England everything would be fenced off and boarded up for safety reasons, which is true. We may have lost the Cats Trail at Beachhaven Primary School but we've still got North Head.

Kare Kare Beach with Grace

So Grace arrived from the Thai Jungle on Friday and in her brief stay in Auckland we tried to show her a few of the more beautiful parts of the city. On Sunday we took her out to Kare Kare Beach on the West Coast, through the Waitakere Ranges. A 40 minute drive from Auckland and we were there, Pete fell into the stream below as Grace and I nimbly hopped across the rocks, alas we weren't camera ready but had a good laugh with the other stream hoppers, poor wet feet baby.

Kare Kare is amazing, you can see pete and grace are just simply in awe ;)

   

The great hills behind them are made up of Volcanic stone and loom straight up out of the dunes. The whole place feels jurassic and you can see why so many films have taken shots from here.

Me and Pete strolling bare feet kiwi style with the picnic and rug. In summer jandels are a pre-requisite due to the high iron content in the sand, it can heat up to an unbearable temp and you see people seriously hot footing it to the waters edge as it sneaks in over the rims of their shoes. In winter though as we are now, it's just lovely, silky and warm.

Isn't it just stunning, it fair takes your breath away when you're standing in it.

endless.

So this is funny, sort of. For me anyway. Pete and I make our way up the top of the sand dune, we've eaten our picnic, wandered the beach stretch and copped a squat in the tussock, only thing left to do? climb a dune and run down the other side at full tilt. we've done this before, but this time we have someone at the bottom of the hill armed with a camera.

I take off first, see that? leaping, BOUNDING in fact, yeyyyyyy, you know that kind of run, Pete's still standing at the top, the words, 'gee that looks awful steep' just passing his lips.

And then he's off, now I'm not sure if you can see his run so I've zoomed in for you below.

 

 

'and one skip hop, traa laa laa'. I laughed so hard when Grace showed me the pics at the bottom. She said, 'are you very competetive?' I pondered the question and before I answered Grace says with a smile, 'thought so'. HA! ....'got my handbag, got my shoes, ooh icky icky sand!'...

Sydney, Australia!

So I recently went to Sydney for a weeks work. Got a couple of days off over the weekend to see a few of the sights!

Sydney Opera House, this was a pretty amazing building. It was made using the science of geometry and utilising parts of a sphere. I'd always thought that it was just one building but in fact it's made up of four separate buildings. Probably better described below.

I wandered around the rest of the city on Anzac Day, 'Australia New Zealand Army Corps', the day hundreds of aussie and kiwi soldiers fought and died at Gallipoli in WWII. There were lots of men in full army regalia walking around, unfortunately I missed the march itself

:(

I have to put a picture of these guys in they were acting out a play in front of the opera house & I have never seen anything like it before, they were swaying themselves right over to each other & back again so naturally. As Amber is silly I have to explain that the poles are attached to the floor & they can't walk around - I think she thought they were on stilts!!

Here is the Harbour bridge, taken from next to the Opera house. It is quite a fantastic bridge that spans across the harbour which was filled up with lots of different types of boats, from old pirate ship looking boats to Jet boats.

So I wandered over the Harbour bride & took a photo looking back towards the city.

The things that I really liked about the city was the number of parks dotted around the city & the versatility of the buildings around the city.

So that was my day out & about in the city. I am looking forward to heading back there again soon!!

Dad

So a couple of weeks back we went up to Maungawhai Heads to stay in a batch with the old man and his girlfriend for a couple of days. The weather was impecable for 4 days straight, not a cloud in the sky.

Dad took us over to a group of massive sandhills for a picnic the first day we arrived in his motor boat (the wee orange thing in the background of this pic) Good thing about dads picnics, they always involve a good proportion of booze. And I was too polite to say it at the time, but yes, the peanuts were stale as all hell, they were dated past their use-by in '97 or something dad.

White sand, just stretched for miles and only accessible by boat so we had the place to ourselves...well, untill we were leaving...then another boat pulled up asking us for spare petrol. There ensued a conversation involving lots of phrases i didn't get 'only got two stroke mate', 'won't ruin me chugger will it?' yadda yadda yadda. All very civil, then the guy says, problem is, i ain't got no cash to pay ya for it. Dad says no worries, guy says, is there anything I can do in return, dad says, 'well mate, you can kiss my arse', guy says, 'bend over mate', at which point I felt it my duty to intervene.

Next day we drove ten minutes round the coast to Langs Beach, cracking day, brilliant surf, shame pete had left his board at the batch. We drank wine under the manuka trees, soaked up the sun and watched the surfers. Despite the look of calm behind pete in the pic, dad nearly drowned that day. Breakers coming in close, rising up a metre over your head before crashing hard onto the sand. Suffice to day dad got caught in the first of a rolling six and by the time I yelled across to him if he was alright his eyes were wide and blue with terror and he was gasping on all fours with the next wave rearing up behind him ready to crash on his back. Michelle was ripping off her tee on the beach ready to come in and luckily I, and then pete made over to him in time, hauling him up under the arms we staggered up the beach as the next wave smacked the shoreline with all the ferocity it could muster. We were lucky, the old man lives to fight another day ;)





Pete doing a Matilda impression.

cute as a muffin.







So second to last day we went to Te Ari point, excellent surf beach so we'd heard and pete strapped his board to the roof of the honda city. The sets were amazing, I can't say this because I have any experience surfing but because their were loads of surfers out making it look easy.

Bit of a distant shot but Michelle managed to get a couple of snaps of us up on the board, officially my first attempt at surfing ever and it was thoroughly brilliant.

pete surfing the white water.

Me surfing some white water. Mum said it looks like my board is just sitting on the sand, for the record, my board is not sitting on the sand.

Heads down, bums up a'cocklin. High on Pete's list of NZ experiences was to get some fresh shellfish. The best we had up at Mangawhai was some wee cockles so we dutifully trudged out on the second to last morning and picked up enough for a couple of shellfish fritters for tomorrows breakfast. Perfect way to end a perfect break.