On Saturday we took a trip up to Tauranga - North East of Hamilton - to stroll on the beach, indulge in the best Italian Icecream, take loads of photographs and collect the kitchen step-stool which we had purchased on Trade Me in the course of this past week. We were just getting mighty tired of doing all these blogspot posts standing up, since we had nothing to sit on at the kitchen counter where the laptop has to be for the phone/broadband connection! We had done some research and found that new barstools or similar are incredibly expensive - nothing, honestly nothing, under R600.00 which we just thought was a bit much considering that there are three packed safely in our container en-route to New Zealand. Having had to resort to plan B with the whole container saga, we are hoping that at last in this coming week, our box of worldly goods can be loaded onto the first and best ship headed for Auckland and that in about six weeks or so, we will have all our own familiar things around us again!
The step-stool (by the way) is a little bit older than could be called new, but at $26.oo we are very happy to park ourselves on it to do all the things that we are needing to do on the pc.
Tauranga - like everywhere else that we have been to see so far - exceeded all our expectations when it came to scenery - there has yet to be a beach or river or stretch of plain old countryside that isn't really beautiful -everywhere you go and everywhere you look, has the potential for a calendar photograph. To be honest, we realise that we are becoming a little blase with all the wonderful scenery around us and continually try to see places as we saw them in our first couple of days here when we were open-mouthed and wide-eyed at how lovely New Zealand is!
As you can see from the photographs which we took, Tauranga has a couple of beaches sort of alongside one another with a stretch of 'peninsula' between them which we walked along and then up to the top of for the most magnificent views over the Pacific ocean and then back towards the beaches. We hear that Tauranga has the most days per year of sunshine so were not surprised to find that although it was overcast when we arrived, (having left Hamilton in the pouring rain) it cleared up into the most glorious sunshiny day with surfers and sunworshippers everywhere. There is a wooden boardwalk all along the beach - a bona fide boardwalk with it's share of families with kiddies on bikes, old folks with their walking sticks and big sunhats and plenty of the 'beautiful people' taking time to enjoy the beach and holiday atmosphere. We dipped our toes into the ocean and were surprised at how cold the water was considering the huge number of lads and lasses out in the swells waiting for the perfect wave - on closer inspection we did notice that all the surfers had wetsuits on. There were of course also the few really brave souls who were there to go swimming and waded into the waves with just a scrap of lycra to protect them from the cold, but admittedly they were by far in the minority. It was another really good day of sights and sounds of NZ and we rounded it off with a double scoop each of the best Italian icecream bought from the icecream parlour on the beachfront - pure indulgence and worth every forbidden calorie!
The closer we got to Hamilton, the more the weather closed in on us and we travelled through quite a few good rain showers before getting home where the sun was shining again! Much like you guys in Scotland Jo - four seasons in an afternoon!
The NZ folks are really obsessed with things being 'safe' - Jo has a reflective jacket which all the guys don if they are going to be beside or on a road - if the jacket has sleeves attached then the bottom back hem is straight across. BUT if the jacket is of the sleeveless variety, then the bottom back edge slopes downwards like an apron at the back over the bum - apparently, it has to do with the surface area required for maximum visibility! I know why they do it, but it does look quite weird!
The 'white line' in the middle of the road is not white - the line on the roads edge to your left as you drive is white - the solid line in the middle of the road is yellow - if there is a dotted line, that will be white and then if there is an area where there needs to be a solid line as well for one direction, this will be indicated in yellow, beside the dotted white line. In SA, there is an arrow painted onto the dotted lines to warn of an approaching solid white line - here, a solid yellow line approaching is indicated by a dotted yellow line for 5 'dots' before it becomes solid. The signs beside the road are often just a bunch of words like - 'keep left unless passing' which is fine for us brilliant folks who can read - the kiwis were very surprised to hear that in SA they are moving away from words on any of the signs and use (as far as possible) symbols to indicate everything that needs to be indicated, besides the names of places.
We bought a small variety of bulbs to put into the garden (or in our case, pots) to flower in the Spring - not that it means much to most of you, but a couple of you will know that I have wanted to grow my own freesias my whole life - they will be planted in April!
Dis al!
No comments:
Post a Comment