Good food, cute babies, and the trimaran... (May 21, 2009)

From the Coromandel peninsula, we headed to Auckland area to watch Tony’s rugby game. Tony is Suzanne’s boyfriend, Suzanne is Renton & Pauline Brown’s daughter, Renton is Robin’s brother, and Robin is Margaret’s (Kim’s ma) best friend from Auburn.

Tony plays lock in Rugby, and he’s got more hops than Racer 5… but he’s being lifted up here…

After the game, we went out to the best meal we’ve had in NZ at a restaurant called Chin Wags. Kim’s parents bought us dinner which was really nice of them.

We stayed the night at the Brown’s and headed up to Auckland after Margaret and Steve took off to Queenstown... we washed the Shevanagan... cuz it looked like this after the Coromandel

A 5 min walk from Tolcher’s place, people were kiteboarding. I already liked his place…

...didn’t take any pics of Tolch… but got some of Rosa (of course)!

Here's Rosa's sshedule on Father Primary Care Giver (FPCG) Day:

After being fed a fantastic meal for the second night in a row, we decided to head up to Northland.

There’s a tolled highway here… and instead of having toll booths, they decided you should park, get out, and pay a machine that doesn’t work very well, so that there is, “No Need to Queue.” That was an infuriating slogan to all the people that queued up.

The Treaty of Waitangi was signed here in 1840, which gave Maori’s full rights… contested as the Maori version of the treaty also promised that the Maori’s would retain their chieftainship… but a lot better than Australia, which didn’t sign any treaties with the Aborigines, or compensate for their land… or really acknowledged that they were humans until 1966 when Australia finally took back it’s “white Australia” policy…

From the treaty grounds (we didn’t go in… costs non-NZ 20$... and we didn’t have time anyway), we walked to Hururu Falls.

Where we found a nice place to camp for the night… the view from the tent site was unbeatable… though we felt like we had to pee the whole time…

But the holiday park had kayaks to use, which was enjoyable, especially going under the waterfall, and getting a good look at the shags (birds).

That night Kevin and Laura took us out to a nice place as a wedding present… so we were spoiled once again. By this time we were getting pretty soft… “whatdayamean, I have to cook?! Preposterous!!!”

Rainbow over the shevanagan

Here is a view of the “Rock”, a converted ferry to a backpackers… that was our original destination, but they’re closed for the season. With kayaks to use, a pool table and a bar… sounded pretty cool.

The other NZ flag flying on “Te Kaihau” which I believe was Maori for “water eater”

This thing was awesome… it felt like a huge, expensive toy…

We slowly made it back to the Holiday Park after an amazing day out in the Bay of Islands… where we were eating in the laundry room to stay out of the rain. And Kevin dumped his whole plate of salad on his soon-to-be bride’s head.

Oh the next morning the owner started burning the old mattresses… after dousing with a few gallons of gasoline… we thought this was weird… and so did the firemen, who showed up 15 minutes later.