Tauranga

To help celebrate Royston's birthday we treated ourselves to a night at a top hotel in Tauranga. On route we stopped off to see the view back down the valley over to Matamata (otherwise known as Hobbiton as a large part of Lord of the Rings was filmed in this area).





The weather was stunning, so we spent some time walking around the waterfront area - largely dominated by restaurants and bars.




The hotel was certainly a treat after most of our nights away here being in a tent. This is Royston's arty shot from our balcony over to Mount Maunganui. The evening was topped off with a lovely meal at one of the waterfront restaurants.

BBQs At Last!!

The weather is now warm enough to crank up the barbie, so tonight was the first of the season. We made the most of the new season asparagus as well.

Sunset at Ninety Mile Beach

We were fortunate to catch a stunning sunset on Saturday night which wass the end to a great day, I'll leave the photos to tell the story...

Ahipara

This weekend we were invited up to Ahipara by Alistair & Darryl to stay at Alistair's parents bach in Ahipara, about 4 and 1/2 hours north of Auckland and at the start of Ninety Mile Beach.





Saturday morning was mostly spent on Ninety Mile beach with Royston fishing for several hours and catching five fish, all of which were put back on this occasion.





We were very fortunate with the weather, a nice morning turning into a beautiful sunny afternoon, befitting of the name the "Winterless North".





The beach was a scene of activity with plenty of quad bike tours and cars driving up and down.

Army Bay

As we are now a two surfcasting rod family, I was encouraged to have a go at fishing this morning at Army Bay. As the weather was warm I decided to give it a go and surprisingly enjoyed myself. Unfortunately no beginners luck in catching a fish, and no success for Royston with his new rod either, but it looks like I may have limited excuses for not going in the future...

Charlie & The Octopus...

Another Iams pet food free toy for Charlie, this time an Octopus - though quite why it has this name when it is a mouse on a spring with three legs I'm not too sure. The only photo I could get that wasn't blurred when he was playing with it, here he is playing it cool...

All Whites v New Caledonia

This evening we subjected ourselves to an evening of international football (if you can call it that) to watch the NZ All Whites against New Caledonia in a World Cup qualifier. To confuse everyone, the All Whites actually played in black...




The level of football was so low it was probably the worst game of football we have ever seen - so bad, we decided not to subject ourselves to anymore pain and left at half time. Even with a Premiership player in the side it doesn't seem to make much difference! We are now officially rugby converts...

The Start of Spring...

At last after what seems like months of rain, spring is finally here and we hit the garden centre with a vengeance. We must be getting old... We have acquired some new wooden troughs which Charlie obviously thought were for him.




Once we managed to get him out, they are now home to our strawberry plants and a variety of lettuce/spinach leaves.





We have also bought several herbs, chillies and tomato plants which we look forward to eating in a few months time.