Back On Track

The rainy weather finally let up this weekend so we got ourselves geared up to do some exploring. First up: Butterfly Creek on Saturday. This is kiddie heaven with a large petting zoo, butterfly house, aquarium, and a great play area. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more: Georgie, who loved seeing all of the animals and trying to imitate their sounds, or Scott and I watching her taking it all in. Her favourites: petting the new lambs, playing with some young kids (of the goat variety) and clucking with the chickens. We'll go back there for sure. We stopped at a winery for a quick tasting on the way home...Scott's treat for the day.

We made our way to the west coast beaches of Auckland on Sunday afternoon. It was definitely worth the windy 1 hour drive to get there (this says a lot considering I was green with motion sickness by the time we arrived!). Karekare is a beautiful and amazingly undeveloped beach which was made famous in the filming of The Piano. We explored the untouched black sand beach and watched the pounding surf. There are several good day hikes in the area. We walked a short distance on one of the tracks which lead to the impressive Karekare falls.

We followed the coastal drive further west from Karekare to visit Piha beach and were rewarded with spectacular coastal views along the way. Piha is a beautiful but very dangerous beach, well known for it's wild surf and dangerous rip tides. Despite the risk, it is a popular surfing area and there were a few young guys (?fools) trying to catch some waves while we were there. There are more great day hikes here that we didn't have time to do this trip, so we're already plotting a return visit.

All in all a great weekend. Next up - Scott's birthday and a visit from Michelle and Chris MacAulay this week. We're looking forward to seeing some familiar and friendly faces!