A Lovely Day

Don’t really know why I’m writing the blog tonight other than the fact we had a really pleasant day.  We started off with a nice cooked breakfast and then after a few minor chores (washing rags, after all, you have to BUY rags now) we headed to Kerikeri to go for a walk.  The idea was to walk from the Stone Store to rainbow falls, an hour and half return walk, so the guide said.  Well, we got to the Stone House and couldn’t find a parking spot, so we drove to Rainbow falls and walked from that end.  It took about 50 minutes at a brisk pace to get to the Stone House.  The walk followed the Kerikeri river and meandered through woods and under the new bypass bridge.  It was a beautiful day and a great walk.  By the time we got back to rainbow falls, we both felt we had earned the sandwich I had carried in the pack!  We washed the car on the way back to Opua and by the time we got back, we had time to prepare for dinner guests.  We had invited Tom and Dawn from Warm Rain, Geoff and Kathy from Bold Spirit and David and Linda from Toketie over for a summer BBQ.  The weather was perfect, light winds, blue skies and not too hot.  It was a BYOM.  David and Linda couldn’t stay, they are in the middle of repainting the interior of their boat but did take an hour off and brought over a appetizer to share.  We ended up having a wonderful evening, and got to know people a bit better.  It was a celebration of our getting back into the water after the haul out. 

It’s days like today that we really appreciate being here.  Not that you can’t go for walks anywhere you are but somehow it seems better in NZ, at least to us.  The trails are not too manicured and there aren’t an abundance of safety rails etc.  It is on your on good judgement not to fall over the bank etc. and no warning signs other than those that are absolutely necessary, i.e “Do not enter when the river is in flood”.  We are also getting a lot of entertainment from the marina.  The Aucklanders are her in droves and it is fun watching them load and unload their boats on the weekends.  The marina staff are going nuts trying to police the place.   There are a subset a people that think that they can come into the marina and just grab any empty berth for a few hours or so to top up on water, get food, etc.  The problem is that they don’t ask permission; they just grab an empty berth, thinking that its OK, we’ll just be a little while.  The problem is that when the berth holder returns in their boat and their berth is occupied, it can cause a bit of a problem,  The current runs pretty fierce through here and when you are coming into your berth, you really only have one shot at it.  If you can’t get in, because, say another boat is there, you can easily end up pinned up against the pilings by the current.  Needless to say the marina staff are running around chasing people out.  They have a good sense of humour (they\d go nuts otherwise) and realize that this too will end once summer holidays wind down.