We’ve been pretty busy settling in here since we arrived but we have managed a couple of trips away.

On Waitangi day, we went to the beach at KareKare – one of the black sand beaches north west of Auckland, and setting of the movie, The Piano. It was a beautiful day and we took off with our picnic, and drove through glorious scenery and arrived an hour or so later.

The kids had a wonderful time playing in the sand and the river, which wends its way to the Tasman Sea splitting the beach into two. It’s mainly a surfing beach and the kids weren’t too keen on going into the sea, much beyond a bit of a paddle, but they loved playing in the shallow river – Aidan spent a considerable period of time running through the water to ocean and back again. Megan spent her time in tamer pursuits, making a series of sand cakes (complete with twig candles), each one bigger than the last.

We ended our day with a walk across the burning sands, and through the Pohutukawa Glade (sadly, we’re beyond the season for these NZ “Christmas” trees to be in bloom, but the glade was lovely nonetheless).

Our second trip away was yesterday, and we went to Waiwera – the attraction there being the hot springs. Again, we took our picnic (courtesy this time of our fab local bakery cum patisserie), and headed off, this time north-east of Auckland. We all had a lovely time, this time the kids were also content to lounge around relaxing in the hot pools for long periods of time (last time we came Aidan was only three and a half, and Megan a mere eighteen months or so, and too small for the hot pools). What a lovely relaxing day!