Boogie Boarding

I have never been a great lover of the sea. The waves seem pretty scary, and I'm not the strongest swimmer. So Stuart has been attempting to get me in, diving under waves and building my confidence. It was going very, very badly, until I discovered Boogie Boarding. When I have that board strapped to my wrist, all fear disappears and it is amazingly good fun. Oh, but I still had to wear a snorkel mask......looks stupid.....but I didn't care :-) lol

And the kids board were a good laugh. Dolphins for me and a very scary shark for Stuart!! :-)
As a treat we had fish and chips that night at Shippeys. A beached ship that has been turned into a chippy, eating fish and chips out of newspaper on the deck. A really cool place that we are definitely going back to.

Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! :-)

Our first Christmas in the sunshine of New Zealand. It's pretty weird celebrating Christmas when it's hot outside, all the windows and doors are open, and you're enjoying breakfast wearing a summer dress! Aunt Janette made a spread of salmon and Californian cocktail. For the amount of food she had planned for the day, we had to start pretty early lol

Time for presents. Mum and Dad had sent parcels from Scotland, so it was great to open presents from them on Christmas morning. My Mum sent a beautiful jacket, totally my taste and style, prefect! :-) Aunt Janette made me the most beautiful box. She filled it with all small collections of old trinkets. It had hat pins, brooches, lace and linens, a perfume bottle, old scraps and loads more. I love it.

We had a ham and turkey Christmas dinner....cooked Kiwi style.............on the BBQ. Just as well, because no way would they be fitting in the oven! The ham was MASSIVE!

Although Stuart did attempt to eat it in a oner lol

Christmas dinner was very tasty. I piled my plate pretty high, and only just managed to finish it. Loosening off a couple of trouser buttons helped though.

 And no Christmas would be complete without the Christmas tree. Kiwi style......outdoors.

Instead of cheap Christmas cracker trinkets and jokes, Aunt Janette gave us Kiwi Christmas tree decorations. Santa on the beach, and a Santa and Tui campervan. Our first decorations for our tree next year.

After dinner we had to have some traditional Christmas cake. Abigail and I had decorated it the night before with a little icing snowman.We even had a play about without the excess making a summer sea scene. Arty eh? :-)

Marsipan fruits anyone?

It has been an awesome Christmas, fantastic to spend it with family. Stuart and I have really enjoyed these past few weeks with Aunt Janette and Uncle Alistair.

Kauri Museum

After visiting the Kauri forests, we went to Matakohe, home to the Kauri Museum. It was a little like Beamish near Durham in the UK, with a post office, school house and pioneer church with actors and interactive displays. A living, breathing, pioneer museum. It even had a full size boarding house, all the rooms complete with old furniture and mannequins to act out each scenario. The hairdresser, the banker, even the doctor and the dentist.

The museum is massive. Rooms filled with old Kauri trees, Kauri furniture and full displays showing how they cut down and then removed the trees from the surrounding forests.

You just can't believe how big these trees can grow until you see them for yourself. This wall shows the circumferences of the largest Kauri trees ever discovered in New Zealand.

And this section has been cut from a single length of tree trunk.

We even  got to sit inside one that had been hollowed to fashion a seat.

My favourite display was actually outside of the museum, what they call Swamp Kauri. Kauri trees and roots that have been preserved for thousand of years underground in swamps and bogs. They end up there after volcano eruptions or earthquakes.

They also had huge glass cases filled with Kauri Gum. New Zealand's version of Amber. It was a pretty good day out. It took us at least three hours to explore everything, and was a good way to get out of the rain.

Kiwi hunters

Success! :-) we went out again looking for kiwi in the forest, and Stuart saw two kiwi! Unfortunately though I wasn't with him, the torch had ran out of batteries so he went back to the van to get more and saw them right next to the path. I couldn't believe I'd missed them so we stayed another night and went on the hunt again. We could hear them, the really loud screaming noise, and it seemed so close. Just as we gave up and were heading back to the van we saw two of them beside the path. One looked like it was about to walk out infront of us. They are really bizarre birds with their long beaks. It wasn't too fussed by our torch, just gave a grunting noise then wandered back into the bush. I was so chuffed. I can't believe we have seen wild kiwi :-) totally worth the late nights creeping through the forest!

Kauri Coast

We are now out again on the West coast of Northland. On driving to the Kauri coast we passed through a beautiful wee place called Hokianga Harbour. The massive sand dunes can be seen for km after km along the harbour shore. While out on a little jetty we noticed a holiday resort right on the beach....very fancy. It was a bit windy while there so we didn't spend any time at the beach, but still pretty to look at.

The reason we are out on this coast is to visit the massive Kauri forest. It has the largest living Kauri trees in the world. I knew they were going to be big......but when we got there I was not prepared for just how MASSIVE they were.
This is Tane Mahuta, named for the Maori Forest God. It stands at 51m and has a 13.8m girth. They say he is nearly 2000 years old. This is the largest living Kauri in the world.

Then there is Te Matua Ngahere, meaning the Father of the Forest. He is 30m shorter than Tane Mahuta but has a girth of 16.4m. He is the widest living Kauri. And I couldn't resist just giving him a hug! lol

In the forest there are also the Four Sisters. Four tall Kauri that has fused to each other at the base.

Just walking through the forest is fantastic. It is so different to anything I've seen back home. It is so dense and thick, everything is all growing on top of each other, fighting to survive. Purpose built paths have been made, some of them elevated above the forest floor. Apparently Kauri roots are so fragile and close to the surface, that walking on them can kill the trees. They have a problem just now with a disease called Kauri Dieback, that is killing off the large Kauri. So on entry and exit to all these forests you have to wash and wipe your feet with disinfectant. It reminded me of foot and mouth back home when you had to dip your feet and car tyres into the red disinfectant.

We stayed in a DOC campsite nearby and at night took a wander through the forest in the dark on a Kiwi hunt! We had to cover our torch with red cellophane, kindly donated to us by another camper, because where on earth do you buy red cellophane?! lol We heard the kiwis calling to each other. Sounds like someone screaming, which is a pretty spooky sound when you are in a forest in the pitch black. We could hear them scurrying around so close to us, but just couldn't reach them with the torch light to see them. But we haven't quit, we are going for a second try tonight. Hopefully we get to see one, fingers crossed!!