Tween saves her own life in violent dawn brawl!

A sneak attack on a local tween was thwarted Sunday with quick reflexes!

Perseverance BrAmPa climbed out of her bed Sunday morning then woke her father by imitating a car alarm before sitting down to enjoy her breakfast with a book.

"Not five seconds later I heard a squeal and then the whole room was filled with flying arms and legs and debris" her mother reported after the incident that left the household of three mildly disturbed, but also amused.

"I was just about to bite into my Ricies when I saw it moving on my bathrobe. That's when I freaked out." Perseverance remembers yelling and jumping up to swat at the offending insect with Calvin and Hobbes, the Sunday Special. The insect retreated under the dinner table where it was contained with a clear plastic bowl by her mother, much to its fury.

"This spider was unlike our typical spider visitor, and I was able to identify it as the dreaded White Tail Spider, one of two harmful spiders in New Zealand, this one being brought here from Australia, naturally," reported Perseverance's father, who attempted to transfer the spider to a more suitable container but accidentally squashed in it the process, thus ruining any desire to save it and show it to friends.

The White Tailed Spider feeds on other spiders and usually only bites humans if provoked, however the bite is immediately painful. Landcare Research notes, "It is usually possible to catch the perpetrator easily, since the spider has poor eyesight, and its identity can then be confirmed. It should be noted that cases of confirmed White-tail spider bites have rarely resulted in anything more severe than a red mark and localised, short-lived pain."

In other news, Syndey, Australia, land of the nasty, biting animals, has been inundated with funnel-web spiders as of late. This from the NZ Herald, "Unlike most spiders, which scuttle away when disturbed, funnel-webs, which can grow to up to two inches long, may rear up and bare their fangs....Found mainly in eastern Australia, they are said to be able to leap 18 inches, and their fangs can penetrate soft shoes and fingernails."

P's Shrine to Christmas

While for me it is not starting to feel a lot like Christmas around here, P has the Christmas Spirit. Since the most festive thing I could do was cut out some paper snow flakes P has taken upon herself to create her own Christmas shrine in her room.

As we have never been a Christmas tree family she has made her own tree out of a piece of driftwood (from my trip to the East Cape). She has covered the driftwood with red and green yarn, put a silver bell at the top, tied a ribbon around it and anchored it in a green gift box. She has collected everything else in the house that is even remotely Christmasy and has placed it under the tree. 

Awesome.

Wacky Hair Day and Mufti!

P is again off to horse camp for the holidays, lucky girl! To celebrate the end of the term they had Wacky Hair Day and Mufti ('muff-tee'). Mufti is a kiwi tradition wherein the kids are allowed to forgo their uniforms for the day if they bring a gold coin donation (1 or 2 dollars). The money is then given away to a children's charity. Mufti is a much celebrated day for P and she was thrilled that it coincided with Wacky Hair Day.

For most kids and parents there was a lot of ratting and aerosol hair products involved. Fortunately P chose to go for plaits (braids) with wool (yarn - no natural fibers could be found in that yarn!) instead. It took 90 minutes to get the braids in, but she won 5th place for wackiest hair school wide.

Zebra Kisses

Last weekend P was able to check off one more thing from her life time goal list: Pet a Zebra.



I have a feeling it will be slightly harder to scratch off Pet a King Cheetah.

Raglan - Home of the world famous left hand point breaks.

Easter is a four day holiday* here, and since we had the weekend off we decided to head out of town. I chose Raglan because it is relatively close to home, and I was intrigued by it's Bohemian Art/Surf culture.


We stayed in the cabooses:

This place offers accommodation in refurbished train cars with a hostel/backpacker/NZ holiday park atmosphere (ie shared bathrooms and kitchen facilities.)

Notice the Easter Bunny. She, along with 20,000 of her closest relatives and friends, lives here year round and thoughtfully provided a dyed hard boiled egg for P since her usual Easter Bunny was not willing to make the 6,000 mile swim to get here.

Also, notice the back of the Buddha sculpture.

If you are not so into cabooses, and you have some sway with the owners, you might get to stay here:

The view from this deck is amazing: (The view of the deck is also amazing.)

You could also stay in the "tipi retreat" for quite a lot more money or just bring your own tipi:

We met some nice folks here and had a quiet, relaxing break. While the shower experience was frustrating at times (scalding/freezing/scalding) and cooking dinner with 30 other people simultaneously is not my favorite sport, overall this was a great place. Best of all none of us acquired head lice which is my new gold standard for rating NZ backpackers/hostels/holiday parks.

On a day trip we visited Bridal Veil Falls: (Not to be confused with Bridal Veil Falls.)

On the way home we went to the Hamilton Zoo and chatted up this chimp:

And now P is off at horse camp and we are back at work. Fortunately this weekend is Anzac Day and my birthday, and I'm off work to boot! More adventures ahead!

Here is P, Flat RJ, Flat Ms Cool Nice, and BlingBling, the horse. Hope y'all have a great weekend!

* Good Friday is a big deal here- the shops close, no one works, and same goes for Easter Monday. B got Tuesday off as well - Easter Tuesday. I love all these holidays! Easter Tuesday?! Fantastic! Can't wait for Anzac and Queen's Birthday Monday!

Flat friends

We have been entertaining some flat friends. R.J. and Ms Cool Nice have been with us for awhile now and soon I will send them back home with photos and great stories to tell.

This picture is for grandma and grandpa, and grandma and grandpa, and the rest of family back home. P is enjoying Fall break and is away at horse camp for a week! Can't wait to see what her pigs get up this time!

More beaches, more sunsets

This was in Whangaroa harbour.

On Ninety Mile Beach at Ahipara.

I had no idea how many dead things wash up on beaches. I'm quite fascinated by it. Here's my folks and P investigating the upper half of a shark (ok, actually only P and I were interested in it. I even touched it with a stick and flipped it over to checked out the underside.).

90 mile beach at sunset.

M&D and P on St Helier's Beach, also at sunset.

Catherdral Cove on Coromandel Peninsula.

Hot water beach on Coromandel Peninsula. This place is very touristy - definitely the busiest beach we went to, but for good reason! Hot water springs bubble up through the sand and at low tide you can dig your own hot tub. Dreamy. I imagine if low tide was at 2pm it could be an unpleasant experience - like being boiled alive, but we went at sunset and it was perfect!

Finally, Piha beach. Yup, sunset.

Intermediate School

Today is the first day back to school for P! Yippee, P! She is very excited to be back in school and meet her new teacher.

She is in the "year seven" or "7th form" which is the first year of intermediate school. Junior High! Back home she would be in the middle of 5th grade, but somehow here she is already in intermediate. I think she will make up the difference by going through five years of Grammar School or College (which is what they call High School here, very confusing) instead of the typical 4 years of high school back home.

In our backyard.

I hope this does not mean our summer is nearing the end! I have so many glorious plans that involve the sun!

Whatipu 2

Just a few more lovely beach pictures. It is all we have been up to lately.

Recent Adventures

Tawhitokino

On the busiest beach day of the year we went to the beach. We had to fight 12 other people for a nice spot at this 1400 meter long beach, but the crowds and the steep uphill-downhill hike to get there was worth it!

Mathorak

B's good friend has come to visit us - Yippee! They are now off to the Bay of Islands where they have chartered a sailboat which B will skipper. Geez, my honey's cool! I'll have to start calling him Skipper B now!


B's good friend was recently in the Philippines and gave me this picture from his travels. I love this picture! The water buffalo is a Bubalus bubalis carabanesis, more commonly known as a carabao. I was lucky enough to meet a few carabao when we went to the Philippines, and I'm looking forward to taking one on a tour with me next time! I believe the sweet set up above is bicycle powered, like a rickshaw. I can probably talk B into this. And P will look so cute riding on top (where she can be as goofy as she wants...)!

Goofy Phase/Goofy Face

P has officially entered the dreaded "I only pose for goofy photographs" phase.

Cheeseball.

On the summit of Rangitoto.

Ok, here she is actually just proving she has finally mastered the skill of making a blade of grass squeal as you blow on it between your hands.

Rangitoto

I've been wanting to climb to the top of Rangitoto island for awhile now, but it was H&A who finally got P and me out there last week.


P took this photo. The good thing about goofy phases is that they can bring out the goofy in others. I have a whole series of fun pictures of H&A now!



One of the best things about Auckland is the clean air and the lack of inversion. Evidently we picked the only hazy day to climb to this volcano. This picture is looking from the summit to Islington Bay. The picture below is from Islington Bay looking toward the summit of Rangitoto.




And now I must get back to Scary Movies with P! More fun adventures to follow!

Dolphins! and Penguins! and Wallabies! Oh my!

Recently we sailed from the Bay of Islands to Auckland, and it was a trip filled with wild beasties. We spotted jellyfish, little blue penguins, small white and grey dolphins that swam with our boat, wallabies - not just small kangaroos!, native wood pigeons and peacocks.

This jellyfish was quite large and I really enjoyed watching it swim all around. One of the locals laughed at me for taking pictures of a jellyfish, but what can I say- there weren't any where I can from, and who knew they have spots??

The Bay of Islands (BOI) is an amazing place. I must have taken 700 pictures just like this one because everywhere you look it is just heartbreakingly beautiful. Sadly, pictures cannot do it justice. You will just have to come and see for yourself!

This is Hole In The Rock, and is a major tourist destination. At low tide boats can fit through the hole.

More wild beasties. That red flag is the flag of the Vice Commodore for our yachting club. That's right- we were invited to sail with the Vice Commodore! I tell you New Zealand is the most fantastic and fascinating place! Yachting seems so snooty in the US, but here everyone sails, and lots of people have boats and most are quite happy to invite us along! I think we are very lucky people.

This is for those of you that want to see more of the boat. I'll let B explain what happened to the main sail.
In BOI we anchored in this small, quiet nook and rowed to the beach:

And hiked up to this cemetary on the hill:

Quite a nice place to spend eternity, really.

But most importantly, we saw Dolphins:





P has declared that seeing these dolphins was one of the best experiences of her entire life. I think dolphins have this effect on a lot of people as our good friend, la hamburgler, went swimming in the BOI and told us that it was one of the most amazing experiences of his life.

B took some lovely video of the dolphins, which I will endeavor to install in this post later.

Then we went to Kawau, and the Mansion House. B has been here before, so read more about it here.
Below is a picture of the boat from the beach, above.

Here we saw wekas (a native bird that is very rare and reminds me of little dinosaurs), peacocks, wallabies and the also rare native wood pigeon, which is very fat and heavy looking for a bird, and makes a lot of noise when it flies.


This is the wood pigeon. This is a rather slimming photo of the bird, I think. Imagine it weighing an additional kilogram, and wheezing when it flies and you have a good idea of what I'm talking about.