Actually the parents are here! And have been for quite some time. Almost a week in fact, I guess I’ve been slacking on updates because of it!

– Here we are at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds with a Maori carving substituted for my bro who couldn’t make it out here. –

Anyway, Me Ma and Pops got in just fine last Friday, and didn’t suffer too much from the effect of a long flight. We’ve been doing a variety of things. First we got out of the big city and headed up North to a town called Whangerai. Stayed in a nice Bed and Breakfast our first night and did a couple easy hikes in the area there to get a feel for things. And moved on to Paihia in the Bay of Islands, my first stop on my own, where we stayed for another night before coming up here to our current destination of Taipa. Taipa is a very small town and not touristy at all which is just fine. My parents have friends here, Mark and Ann Perry, that we’re staying with at the moment who are actually from Estes, and have been coming here for 21 years if I remember correctly.  They have been great and are showing us a good time. Our first day we ticky-toured up to the Northern tip of the North Island to Cape Reinga stopping off at Spirits Bay and the sand dunes along the way. The sand dunes were fun. My Dad and rented a boogey-board to ride down on them. No one else was up for I guess, but we had fun as they watched us from down below. My Dad must have felt I was a little kid during the experience because at one point he held the board for me while I climbed on to go shooting down the sand to a vicious spill and sliding halt on my rear. It didn’t stop me from getting back on though and ending up in a stream below before getting off. And then on the way back down we took Ninety-Mile Beach which was awesome. Driving on the beach was so much more relaxing surprisingly than the curvy, bumpy roads of New Zealand. The beach was nice, straight, only a few bumps, we could watch the waves beat in on the sand, see
seagulls pick up small shells to about 20 feet in the air before releasing them to the ground below in hopes of breaking them open for a small treat, and so forth.

– Here’s a picture of my Dad wiping out on the dunes. –

We’ve also been out fishing in Doubtless Bay where we caught Red Snapper and a number of other fish that I can’t recall there names at the moment. I caught four of them, and was happy with that(!) because when we usually go deep sea fishing in Mexico or something we usually don’t catch anything at all, or everybody else does and I don’t get squat. So we had a local restaurant fix some of the catch last night which was fresh and delicious!

– This is one of Mark’s catches of the day. –

What else….oh yes, we’ve been oystering as well when the tide is out. Yesterday we brought in bucket after bucket of the little guys, which are quite good steamed or even cooked on the grill with a little sauce. So all in all things have been going very well and we’ve been enjoying living on the sea if you will. We plan to move on shortly though South of here and figure out where we’re going to stay for Christmas before everything books up! Hope everyone is doing well back home in cold Estes Park! We heard today that it was 17 below there! Yikes