April 22: A North Island tiki tour (III)

After a week in Auckland we commenced our whistle-stop tour of the North Island. We visited

• Wanganui, to see Daddy's aunt, cousins, and family;
• Wellington, to see Bevan, Louise and Barry, and Heather and family;
• Hastings/Napier, to see Andrew and Sarah and their new little girl Hannah;
• Rotorua, to see the geothermal wonders of New Zealand; and
• Tauranga, to see Jo.

After a busy week in Auckland, Aidan and Megan took a break from sight-seeing and enjoyed a lovely quiet day in Wanganui. We stayed in Auntie Elspeth's house (she had very kindly given us the run of her house, only coming back to cook meals for us and generally spoil us - thank you so much Auntie Elspeth, we really appreciated everything) and her son and daughter-in-law, Garth and Brydie, with their children Rachel and Alex, live in the house next door.

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Image 0067-3815 Canon PowerShot S45 1/60 sec., f/2.8 2007:04:16 04:15:18 UTC (c) Keith & Carolyn

Rachel and Megan.

Aidan and Alex.

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Aidan and Megan caught up on some much-needed sleep, and later in the afternoon had a lovely time playing with Rachel and Alex. In the evening, Nan and Grandad arrived and joined us all for a family meal. It was really lovely to see everyone again.

On Tuesday morning, we headed off to Wellington, with a quick stop in to the Canaan Honey shop. This shop is owned by the parents of a friend of ours, Steve, and we'd promised to look in and pick up some honey! It's a great shop, run by lovely people (they even opened up early as we'd unwittingly arrived half an hour before they officially opened) and their honey is delicious - we definitely recommend a visit if you like honey and you're in the Wanganui area!

The trip to Wellington was quick and uneventful - the kids slept! - and when we arrived we checked into our motel before heading off to meet Bevan, a school friend of Daddy's, for lunch. We had another quiet afternoon, with Megan sleeping and Aidan enjoying watching New Zealand children's television!

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Megan playing in the motel.

That evening we went to Louise and Barry's for dinner - the kids loved climbing up all 151 steps to their house - they both walked all the way up, and they had a wonderful time playing with Louise and Barry. They were so excited by the whole visit that they took a long time to unwind and go to sleep - we had to drive for over half an hour before Aidan fell asleep!

On Wednesday morning we went to visit Heather and Becca. Heather and Becca used to go to Rhyme Time with us when we lived in Cambridge - they moved back to New Zealand at approximately the same time that we moved to Scotland. It was lovely to catch up with them again, but sadly we were a few weeks too early to meet Maggie, who was at that stage still a rather large bump! Congratulations Heather, Jack and Becca, and welcome to the world little Maggie!

Megan and Becca.

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From there we drove to Hastings to visit Andrew, Sarah and baby Hannah. This journey was the most spectacular of the whole trip. It was a beautiful day, and we drove through the mountains - a bit like Maisy on her train (a favourite story for both Aidan and Megan) we went "Up up up into the mountains and down down down the other side". In terms of beauty and awesome scenery, not to mention the at times, somewhat scarily steep roads, it compares only with a trip Carolyn made many years ago with Grandma and Grandpa in Kenya's Great Rift Valley - it was truly spectacular.

Once down from the mountains we stopped for lunch in the town of Masterton. Quite by accident we came across a lovely little cafe called The Perky Pukeko. Through the back of this cafe is a family area, with a play area for children, several tables, and a stair gate separating this area from the rest of the cafe. This allowed us to both relax and enjoy our lunch, and let the children run around freely without worrying that they would disturb the other customers :-) . It's near the (attended) public toilets.

We had a lovely relaxed few days in Hastings with Andrew and Sarah, so much so that we barely took any photos at all! Both children loved meeting baby Hannah although, at only four weeks old, she was a little too small to play!

We went into Napier with Andrew (while Sarah and her baby group met at their house) and went to the play area on Marine Parade. Along with a whole group of younger children, Aidan was especially fascinated by the antics of a couple of older boys at a large sand-and-water activity. We also had a beautiful walk around Pandora Estuary, and on another occasion the "boys" went to Trainworld.

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Pandora Estuary walk. One day we went for a walk around this estuary. Turned out to be a more ambitious walk than we'd anticipated, but it was a lovely calm not-too-hot day and the estuary was beautiful. Highlights were the deafening cicadas, the hermit crabs(?) which made complex wormy patterns in the mud, and the herons.

Fun with gum tree bark. Aidan found a strip of bark shed from a gum tree. Here he's using it to pull Megan along - later he fished with it from a bridge. Ah, the versatility of youth.

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Aidan running the Thomas layout at Trainworld, an impressive train display in the centre of Napier. Aidan brought Andrew and Daddy along with him. We started by taking a ride-on train ride around the outside of the whole display, and then Aidan spent some time turning the knobs to control the Thomas layout. There were also several much larger layouts in various gauges. Andrew and Daddy, though, were most impressed by some amazingly realistic scale neon signs - they really looked like neon, but were well under a millimetre thick! Go and visit the display - it's run by a lovely retired American couple and it's really good, but it could soon be a thing of the past if it doesn't get a bit more business. It's well recovered from a fire [4MB PDF, page 14] eighteen months ago.

We left Hastings much refreshed and headed on to Rotorua. We had lunch on the shores of Lake Taupo, and stopped for a few hours for a wander through Waimangu.

Frying Pan Lake, Waimangu, Rotorua. One of the best things we visited was Waimangu, a geothermal attraction near Rotorua. It's full of hot springs, steam, sulphur, geysers, and impressively coloured mineral deposits. Megan and Aidan both loved it, although Aidan was (sensibly) a bit scared! More on Mummy and Daddy's blog.

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Inferno Crater, Waimangu. We're appreciating the amazing sky blue colour of this 80degC, 30m deep acid lake fed by an underwater geyser. Aidan is hiding on a bench - not sure if he's hiding from the lake or the camera... probably the latter.

From there, we went on to our motel near Rotorua and met up with Jo. She joined us for dinner, and stayed the night. In the morning, we went to the Polynesian Spa - both kids loved the warm water, and Aidan bravely went down the water slide on several occasions. We were a little worried that the "hot pools" would be too hot for the children, but Megan clearly takes after her Mummy, and loved the heat!

We had a yummy lunch at the Fat Dog, the best known and the best cafe in Rotorua, and then headed on to Tauranga for the afternoon. Jo showed us round the school where she works, and then we went for a walk at Mount Maunganui (beach), before having dinner at her place. Then, with kids all ready for bed, we drove back to Auckland to Auntie Heather and Uncle Martin's place.

Mount Maunganui.

Image 0068-3922 Canon PowerShot S45 1/999 sec., f/4.9 2007:04:22 04:29:18 UTC (c) Keith & Carolyn