Christmas 2005

Our poor Christmas tree - with all the dead needles we had to drag

out of the middle of it to make it look not so banjaxed

Christmas eve, looking in to front room from deck

Christmas eve - looking into kitchen from deck

Christmas morning with Annette, an old friend of daran's, and her kids

On new trampoline

No photos of us having our go unfortunately but it was lots of fun -
very un-english-christmas-morning like

lots of pressies

Left to right - Keith (daran's brother), Carla (and bump), Brandon (daran's other brother and father of the bump), carla's brother (name? er?), Stef (keith's girlfriend)

Carla opening multitude of baby presents

Yum

Keith the chef

Carla, Brandon, Carla's brother, me and stef.
carla's mum you can just see in the front

Nicola (daran's sister) with dog Sandy

Christmas dinner

Lea and Brandon (daran's mum and brother)

Lea and Bob (daran's grandad)

Carla's mum, nic, lea and stef

Turns out you get just as full at NZ christmas as at English Christmas.
Too full to take any more pics :)

Our House, Auckland

View down our road to the harbour

Our house

BBQ on the deck the other night

View from the deck!

Our friends Kirk & Alana at

Alana's parent's house in Te Puke near Tauranga

The Far North

The Endless Summer backpackers in Ahipara,

at the bottom of 90 mile beach.

We'd highly recommend this place - it was brilliant.

View out our window - note hammocks - good sign.

Arriving at the giant sand dunes at Te Paki, just below Cape Reinga.

Just a baby sand dune

Pah!

This is a real one - tiny dot is me climbing up

At the top - pretty sheer drop - it really is quite high you know

Looking over the edge. Hard to convey just how high this was -

but that blue dot is daran at the bottom

The dent my head left in the sand when I bailed on the second run.

So much fun!

The lighthouse at Cape Reinga at top of NZ

The Hunt for Agent New Zealand

In 2003 a secret agent began his reconnaisance mission in New Zealand. His secret location was behind a bench observing the haruru falls north of the Bay of Islands. Over two years later we were given a map of his whereabouts so we could pick him up and find out what he had learnt...


...(this post may not make sense if you are not yourself a secret agent - so feel free to ignore)






Lovely views - obviously a lot of secret and important things to be observed here...











We set off following the detailed map...















.......












View from the observation deck...




























Armed with a trusty stick we began the search....












These are just some snapshots of the extensive 45 minute search we made through mud and spider webs...

















......















However, the bench (the only bench around for miles - it was the right one!) did not match the description on the map, it was missing a length. We did not think the map drawer would have got it wrong as she had trained for many years in the art of map drawing...











We could only conclude that the secret agent had been found out and had had to effect a dramatic escape from the scene, involving the explosion of the part of the bench where he had been hiding. You can see badly disguised explosion marks here to the left...

...We can only hope that one day he will be able to come out of hiding and give us his secret observations...

The Bay of Islands

View from Russell - the original capital of New Zealand

Russell Pier