Hope this finds you all well. We've been enjoying the rest of the New Zealand summer and shall update you with news and photos!
At the end of January we had a long weekend away in the Hawkes Bay region on the East Coast. We had 3 days in and around the art-deco town of Napier - unusual that NZ cities have old buildings that you can link to a certain era, so quite nice to walk around. Visited the National Aquarium in Napier which was interesting, although quite a lot of the species don't actually live in NZ waters which seemed a bit strange. Terry the hawksbill turtle was cool though!
In the sunshine over the next couple of days we went up Te Mata peak (only a hill really
!) that overlooks most of the southern part of Hawkes Bay and to the mountains in the centre of the North Island and went cider-tasting (the region is actually famous for wine, but we didn't have time to do the touristy thing and hire bikes and cycle around all the vineyards, so opted for the cider instead) which was delicious on a hot day...and managed to bring back a couple of bottles for later consumption!
We also walked out to Cape Kidnappers, where there's a huge gannet breeding colony (about 4000 birds in total). We were amazed how close they nest to the path! The birds nest literally 1m from where the tourists gawp at them, feeding their chicks quite happily. They're both funny and very cute (even Ben thought so and he's always accusing Kerry of being a twitcher!); they crash-land every time (some got dangerously close to our hitting our heads!) and they're so pleased to see their mate come back that they spend the next minute ignoring their chick and tapping beaks/rubbing necks to say hello!
Then a couple of weeks later we went over to the Taranaki on the West Coast of the North Island, with the aim of climbing Mt Taranaki, another volcano. Started off in beautiful blue skies, above the clouds, perfect view of the summit, but the clouds chased us up and by the time we got to the top they had caught up with us and we couldn't anything below us! Shame! At least we were actually still in the sun on the summit. But had great fun scree-running on the way down....had struggled up about 400 vertical metres of loose scoria on the way up in about 1 1/2 hours.....then ran down it in about 10 minutes!
A couple of weeks ago we went back up to the Central North Island with Will and Alex to do the Tongariro Crossing. We did it with Kerry's parents in November, but the weather was pretty rubbish, so was great to do it in perfect sunshine this time. We also did a side trip up Mt Ngauruhoe (which stars as Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings), a perfect cone volcano that has the same struggling-up-hundreds-of-metres-of-loose-scree as Mt Taranaki, but the views from the top were well worth it! There's also loads of really brightly coloured rocks, and a classic circular crater in the top.....just to keep the geologists happy!
Then this weekend we went to stay with Jane and Matt (Jane is one of Ben's work-mates) at Jane's family beach house an hour and a half north of Wellington. Had a lovely afternoon on the beach, playing a bit of rugby, some BYC (back-yard cricket for the uninitiated) and a BBQ. Then had a morning's walk around the beach/estuary before heading back to Wellington to go to the Phoenix football semi-final. Fortunately the Phoenix won (after a nervous extra time!), so the sell-out crowd (amazing for a football game in NZ!) were justified in their abusive chants at the Aussies!
Think that rounds off our first year in NZ fairly well, we'll update you again soon!
