More visitors!

Hi all,
We have had a busy few months, after Dad and Sandra left we had Jon (Andrea's Bro) for 10 days, and then a few days after that Mum Piv come for 2 weeks and her 60th Birthday! (Sorry Mum)
We have done a little travelling between visitors to Whangerei which is north of Auckland and then a bit along the west coast around Piha, Raglan, and Kawhia then inland to Cambridge and around there. We decided after a lot of deliberation to give in and go to Hobbiton to see the Shire (from Lord of the Rings), and it was actually pretty cool, we are officially tourists again! We are in Auckland at the moment for the comedy festival and going to see Jack Dee tonight!!! After that who knows!! I have got together some of my favorite pics, so hope you enjoy.

This is called Sledging, you basically go down white water rapids on your belly holding on for dear life to a float! Great fun! We did this with Jon near to Rotorua.

This was taken on a Jet boat in Taupo, at this point I had major whiplash from being thrown around all over the place but Si and Jon seemed perfectly happy - Boys hey.

After the jet boat i insisted on some hot pools to nurse my injuries! This was right neat Taupo and you can see all the boiling hot water running down the rocks and into the pools, The top pool was soooo hot it was great, felt much better after that. We were the only people there too which was a bonus.

This is the view from the top of Mount Maunganui, we stayed here for a few days chasing some sunshine as it had rained nearly the whole time Jon was here up to this point. However it didnt take long for the rain to catch up with us, we just managed to get down before it started again.

Beach Hop in Whangamata, yey found some more sun! Si and Jon were in their element here, there were thousands of old American muscle cars all parading around the streets we were walking around for a couple of hours and still didn't see all the cars.

This is Piha, one of our favourite spots in NZ, it was a stunning day and there was hardly anyone there, brilliant! The surf here is crazy, we went in on our body boards and got wiped out straight away, Good fun though!

Another deserted beach, this is down the road from Piha it is called Karekare, so beautiful, cant believe there was no one there.

We went to the top of Mount Donald Mclean which is near Huia, the views were stunning, it is on the west coast but you can see all the way over to Auckland city centre.

Easter weekend and between visitors we met up with some friends Jim and Noleine at Gulf Harbour just north of Auckland. We went cockle picking and they all ate them up, I had to make do with some wine instead - shame hey!

Shakespear Regional park near Gulf Harbour, they have these giant photo frames in all the regional parks apparently. Great idea!

These photos are in Whangerei, In the top picture if you look in the background on the left, you will see the mountain with all the finger like bits sticking up, we climbed that and nearly died! It was only 45 minutes to the top but it was all steps and our legs ached for days after! The view was worth it though  (bottom picture)

Back at the Mount Maunganui with Mum Piv. Ice cream was a well deserved treat after climbing to the top of the Mount.

Feeling energetic we decided to go on a bike ride, was good fun but ended up with sore bums! The bonus being we went for a  great smoothie after!

This is a hot springs in Rotorua, there is steam coming off all over the place here, is too hot to sit in and too smelly! smells like rotten eggs - Yum! If you can hold your nose it looks cool!

This is our holiday home that we booked in the East cape of the North Island, it was so beautiful, set in huge grounds right on the beach. This is where Mum spent her 60th, she found a new friend here, Inca the owners dog, was at her side all day, wanting sticks/pine cones throwing. For her birthday the Owner (Chris) cooked us all dinner which was really lovely, unfortunately a few days later Mum lost her camera in the sea! So we lost those pictures :(

How you are supposed to concentrate on driving when the scenery is this good I dont know. This was the road through the East Cape

View over Gisbourne, from Captain Crooks lookout. There is a statue there supposed to be of Captain Cook, however it apparently looks nothing like him so who the statue is of - no one knows!

Simon on his birthday, stuffing his face as usual lol.

Beaches around Whitianga in the Coromandel, over Black Jack hill.

A crazy train ride in Coromandel town, A guy who wanted to get clay down from the hills, built his own railway, now it takes people up to the top for the views, which are great, you can see all over the Coromandel.

Fishing in Raglan, unfortunatly no fish for Si this time!

Kawhia harbour

Well who knew! A hot water beach that New Zealanders keep all for themselves, no one knows its there unless you stay in the campsite down the road. We actually got some room to make a huge pool in the end, sitting right on top of the hot water coming up through the sand. 

We did a walk, then bike ride, then canoeing around the Waikato river, was a really good day and the sun was out most of the day too which is always a bonus in Autumn.

A crazy town near to Cambridge called Tirau, this is the information centre believe it or not! All the shops have artwork made from corrugated iron, very strange!

Hobbiton! The set has been left as it was in the film, there are loads of doorways built into the hills and the Green Dragon pub (bottom 2 pics) is great, we got a glass of cider in hobbit cups! Didnt expect to enjoy this really as we are not that bigger fans of the films but it was really good. The detail is crazy.

Waiere falls near Matamata, we climbed up to the top it was really windy and the water was getting blown in our faces. Was actually quite nice after the hike up.

Well thats it for now! Hope I haven't bored you all to tears. Will get some more pics on soon.
Missing you all- Cant believe we have been here over a year already. Lots of love

On the road again (At last)

Hi everyone,
We finished working at the beginning of February at last! We had a couple of weeks relaxing in Katikati and going to the Beach, then Dad Piv and Sandra joined us on 20th Feb.Since then we have been all over. We have been to the Corromandle, Wellington, over on the ferry to the South Island, and went to Abel Tasman, Lake Tekapo, Arrowtown, and then to Doubtful and Milford sounds. Last stop Queenstown before flying back up to the North Island. We have been to some amazing places and seen some amazing things. I have put a few of my favourite pictures on this blog so I hope that you enjoy looking at them!

The follwing few pictures were taken in the Coromandle when we went in January for an overnight hike with Pip and John, our landlords at the time and a few of their walking mates. We climbed to the top of the mountains near Thames called the Pinnacles and watched the sun set up there, it was sooo beautiful.

Simon's favourite picture, this was of the full moon on the way back down to the bunkhouse, we thought it looked like a scene from a horror movie.

This is Cathedral cove near Whitianga in the Coromandle. We went on a boat trip for a couple of hours and saw all the "famous" spots such as this. It was a lovely day and the sea got a little rough which made it great fun.

Views from the west coast of the Coromandle peninsular on our way round to Auckland

This Marlborough sounds, the Ferry crosses through here on its route from Wellington to Picton in the south island. Definatly a great way to start the trip in the South!

This is the Abel Tasman national park near(ish) to Nelson. The sea was so blue and inviting but unfortunately pretty damn cold!! This was taken on a walk I managed to con Simon in to which turned out to be about 24kms. I made the rookie mistake of going in a brand new pair of walking shoes and Simon went in trainers, as you can imagine we both had pretty sore feet by the end of it! The last picture was a little beach that we waded to from the walking track and we had it to ourselves for all of 10 minutes until everyone followed our lead, but for 10 minutes we had our own piece of paradise! we even tried to swim and sore feet or not it was still too cold!

We hired out a Kayak for the day and amazingly we didn't kill each other by arguing but we were nearly dead at the end of the day, the sea decided to get a bit rough and the wind was against us all the way back, very very tired!!  It was well worth it though, we went all around the bays and around an island which had seals living on it, they had not long had their pup's so we spotted a few of those too along with a rare blue penguin After the walk and the canoe we had a couple of days rest!

The above photos were all taken at a lake in the middle of the south island called lake Tekapo, the water was so blue and the scenery absolutely stunning. This was Simon's favourite spot in the south. In the evening we went up to the observatory at the top of Mount John and looked at the stars through some huge telescopes. The pictures of the sunset were taken from our lodge which was right on the lake, shame about the bus loads of "certain" tourists that showed up every ten minutes!! but even with that an awesome place to stay.

This is Arrowtown, near Queenstown. The whole town is set out to look like it is really old, with old style country pubs, old fashioned sweet shops with all the sweets in jars (Needless to say Si and I went in there!) Was a really cool little place and we had a lovely meal at an old pub there.

We did a scenic flight over Doubtful sounds which was amazing, however we did all feel a little sick when we got out! The pilot was great he was zipping over all the mountains and through all the arms of the sounds and came down low for us over a pod of dolphins. Definatly somewhere to come back to!

The above is Milford sounds, it was unfortunatly a bit cloudy but we went on a boat trip down the arm of the sounds and back, was still great scenery just a shame about the weather, they do get between 5 and 6 metres of rain a year here though so we would have been pretty lucky to get a sunny day! The road to the sounds had a few really good spots on it though which we stopped at, the waterfall in the picture was just next to the road!

We stopped a couple of nights in Queenstown, which was very touristy, it was a cool place to have a few beers and a meal. We even managed to pay for our dinner by winning on roulette at the casino, but it is not very pretty in the summer so not put any pics on! We are back in the north island now as Jon and then Mum Piv are coming over for a visit, so there will be some more pics soon. Hope everyone is well and missing you all. xxx