Hi everyone! It’s Saturday morning and the weather has taken a change for the worse. It’s raining outside and the sky is grey and gloomy. We decided to take a ride up to Westport today, just to check it out as we haven’t been there before. It took us about an hour and half and it was still drizzling with rain when we got there.
There’s only one main street in the town, so we browsed around some of the shops and had a quick bite to eat before getting back in the car and driving on to the Seal Colony at Tauranga. The photo on the right is from google, as we didn’t bother to take any photos in the rain!
When we arrived at Tauranga, the rain stopped and the sun started to come out. The scenery was beautiful, so we dowsed ourselves in sand fly spray and set off to walk to the seal colony view point up on the cliff.
Just before I go on, I should mention that Eloise lost another tooth this morning! So now she has a big gap at the top and the bottom!
This is Greg and Eloise just before we started off on the walk.
And here is a little friend of Eloise’s that she met on the way!
The walk up to the cliff top was really lovely. I had to give Eloise a helping hand at some points as it was quite steep.
In the photo on the left you can just see one of the seals asleep on the top of this rock. We saw over 20 seals and pups, some were swimming in the sea and others were just soaking up the sunshine!
When we got back to the car, we went for a little drive along the beachfront. It was a gorgeous sandy beach and the water looked so inviting, so we sprayed ourselves again with sand fly spray and headed down to the beach for a paddle.
As you can see, I’m not in any of the beach photos, as soon as I stepped into the water, the sand flies descended and started a feeding frenzy on my arms and hands. I ran off back to the car to escape them. The sand flies are driving me nuts at the moment and have even been biting me at night. The bites are fine until you scratch them by accident and then they swell up and don’t stop itching.
Aaaaargh, they are the only downside of living in New Zealand. We’re all hoping that if we get bitten a lot, we will eventually become immune to them. Going into town on Monday to buy some Garlic capsules from the pharmacy to see if that helps deter the little critters.
The above two photos were taken on our way home. The sun stayed out all afternoon and so we stopped off at the Punakaiki Tavern for a nice cool beer to quench our thirst after the walk.
It’s now Sunday morning and the rain has come back to visit. Eloise has her friend Maka round to play today. This is the little girl she met at Art in the Park, she is the daughter of Tony Manuel, they guy who we bought our Maori carving from. We were going to go a drive to Hokitika Gorge with them, but the weather is rubbish, so the girls have opted to play DS games and watch DVD’s in Eloise’s room.
Considering it was absolutely baking hot on Friday, I’m now sitting here with woolly socks, jeans, t shirt, jumper, scarf and long cardigan on, feeling very cold. Let’s hope there is a break in the weather soon, so that we can take the girls for a walk down the beach and get some exercise and fresh air.
Greg is off to Christchurch on Tuesday to meet up with a couple of people. More of a networking trip, but you never know where these things might lead. While he’s gone, I’m heading into town with Linda and Eloise to go and look around the art gallery as one of her friends has some work on display.
OK, that’s all for now, looking forward to seeing you on Skype this evening (your morning). Take care, love Sarah x