Well we have been kind enough to give you a rest from mammoth emails for some time. Mostly because we have temporarily hung up our travelling hats and settled in to do a bit of the w word... No I can't bring myself to say it.. WOR.. No I can't. Anyhow it's all going well and we are both gainfully employed and saving up more fun tokens for our next adventures, whatever they may be. We are living in Auckland at the moment, we have been here since August and enjoying it. The city's pretty cool and all the better now summer is here we can finally come out of hibernation :) I have bought an orange bike, yes bright orange obviously called Jaffa. I have been biking about dodging the traffic and troublesome pedestrians. Zac is working for a kayaking company and enjoying the outdoor life. We get free use of the kayaks too, all good.
I think last time I wrote we were in beautiful Wanaka dogsitting for crazy jack russells. Well sadly our good life had to come to an end and we packed our things into our new to us 2.3 kids and a dog people carrier or Nissan Serena who has been given the name frog being that it's green and a french girl sold it to us. We made our way to Dunedin on the east coast, and up to Picton to catch the ferry and from Wellington after a rest :) a quick sprint up the north island to Auckland. It took us a couple of weeks to find our current flat after staying in some less than salubrious accommodation. Our flat is pretty
smart - some might say swanky! We share it with 2 other couples, both kiwis so the accent is coming along nicely. I have 'heaps' of everything and it's all 'True' if you know any kiwis you'll know what I mean...
Last month my parents came to visit which was great. I joined them for their tour of the south island in a huge Maui camper van. My Dad did a great job of driving the equivalent of to the moon and back, up and down mountains and valleys. We saw penguins, seals, sea lions, plenty of birds and did I mention the Penguins! We were lucky enough to see blue and yellow eyed ones. They were brilliant. We ate some amazing food and took a shot at trying all the south island wines.
We have had as many camping trips as possible in the last few weeks now that the sun has come out to play. We have been up to the Bay of Islands again and visited some stunning beaches and gazed at the massive kauri trees. Last weekend we went to a marine reverve called goat island and thought it would be fun to go snorkelling. The water looked blue and tropical enough and for a moment we forgot that the Antarctic isn't too far away and took the plunge. Despite our 3 mm wetsuits and vigorous arm movement we only lasted 30 minutes before I couldn't feel my feet, face or snorkel. We did manage to see a lot of big snappers and other fish and a huge black ray. So it was worth the chill factor.. I think we may wait a month for the next sea adventure though.
Here are the photos of our latest happenings.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/
