"If you don't see the book on the shelf, write it." ~ Beverly Cleary
I think I’ve reached my puke story quota for a lifetime, but I think you can figure out the gist of it by looking at the last couple pictures of this post. Aside from that, these pictures are my very, very favorite of our trip so far. Because looooook!!! We were practically all alone in this creek, stomping away until we had far more sand on our bodies than we wanted to take home with us.
Scroll slowly, because there isn’t much better than happy children doing happy things in a far away land.
Even though we’d just arrived at the Hot Water Beach, most families, school groups and couples were heading out for the day. We’d had no idea it’d take us as long as it did to get there so we were very weary and bleary when we arrived.
But because we love the water, and we almost always pack our suits, we were ready for fun. The girls spent a very, very long time sprinting back and forth on the beach while the waves crashed in.
A little tidbit of information is this: Barry’s back was in pretty bad shape when we went on this day trip. He was hobbling around like an old man, and I’m okay mentioning it now because just this morning he did some show-off jumping jacks, so he’s back in action…kind of.
Kids, children, babies, especially ones that get car sick, or maybe have been on an airplane for 89 years recently, do not care about driving the scenic route. Or maybe they don’t care at at all, ever, about hitting the stretch of winding roads and seeing the most magical of views.
When we first made the decision to come to New Zealand for an extended stay, we thought we were going to be that family that did the camper van thing the entire time. We’re campy-type people and we like to be in a small space all together.
But the more that we talked about it, because Barry and I love to talk for 2 million years before we reach any major decisions, we decided that camper van life wasn’t going to be for us. For lots of reasons, really. Kids that get car sick was a MAJOR one.
And since we’ve been here, I’ve thanked my lucky stars more than one time that we aren’t camper vanning our days away. We’ve essentially become glorified beach bums with a ’boutique apartment’ to come home to at the end of a day. It’s awesome and maybe, just maybe, our neighbors don’t love us because we come with small, loud kids.
We’re staying in a small town just across the harbor from Auckland. The ferry is practically spitting distance and I use the word ‘ferry’ very loosely. The boats here they call ferries are tiny boats. (We rented bikes yesterday and rode across and around the city….another post for another day, again).
Anyhow, our first non-jet lagged day here, we got it in our minds (read: I got it in MY mind) that we should do a ‘quick’ trip to the Hot Water Beach just a mere 2.5 hours away. In our tiny compact car.
New Zealand is a very developed country, but their ‘highways’ are very, very rural and their ‘un-sealed’ roads are even more so. We drove for what seemed like hours and stopped at the halfway point, and had lunch, as we hadn’t yet perfected the art of packing massive sandwiches for our outings.
A quick lunch stop and many, many more windy roads we finally got to the Hot Water Beach…..only to learn that the tide was coming up and the actual ‘hot water’ that you can dig do was under the incoming water. Ooops. Forgot to check the tide table.
Our girls didn’t care. They were happy just to run wild on the beach.
Part two tomorrow.
