Local beaches and items of interest

With the sand running through our hourglass rapidly, we go every day to walk 3-4 miles on one of the many beaches. We see many people also walking, but often times, there is no one else around because there are so many beaches on which to walk. This was along our walk yesterday, Wednesday, March 29th. Many of the beach front property owners get artistically creative to offer passersby a place to pause and enjoy.  This picture was on our walk from the north end of Milford Beach to the south end of Takapuna Beach and return, which is 5 miles long.

The next pictures are from the beach at Long Bay regional park where we stopped for lunch.  There were very few people around as you can see from the picture looking down the beach. This walk was about 2.5 miles.

After we left Long Bay, we stopped at a small-town beach, Waiake, and witnessed more school classes in the water. Some were receiving advanced kayaking lessons while others were learning the techniques of proper sailing.

The motorized inflatable boats were used by the instructors to ride along near the students to call out the instructions.

Part of learning to sail was also learning how to upright your rig if the wind tipped you over.

I found this next picture interesting. It is the NZ postal service delivering mail in their vehicle. 

Mahurangi West and Auckland wharf

 Mahurangi West is a Regional Park, similar to our state parks only not as developed, about thirty miles north of where we are staying. This is a gorgeous area and not many people around because it is not real convenient. This first picture is of the native Kauri tree that has a massive circumference around the base of the trunk.

The following pictures are from Shakespear Regional Park about 20 minutes away.

We even shared our hike with some sheep.

We went to the wharf in downtown Auckland just to see how much it has changed. The first picture is standing on the wharf and looking at the marina with the harbor bridge in the background. Lots of high dollar boats here.

We went back to Maungauik/North Head Historic Reserve, across the harbor from Auckland, to have a picnic lunch of the usual fare, PBJ.

Another place that we found interesting was the town of Waiwera.  It had a small beach, but something more interesting was the very small church, tucked away in between two houses.

Then we walked the full length of Takapuna beach and on around the rocks to Milford Beach, a total distance of 4-5 miles.

The black rocks you see in the foreground are lava rocks that came from the volcano that formed Rangitoto Island a few hundred years ago.

Here is the entrance to Orewa Beach from the town center. It's probably fair to say Orewa is our favorite beach.

A couple other things worth noting:

• when we have apples at home in the USA, I cannot eat them without first peeling them, even after washing them by the recommendation of the USDA, because the pesticides used, even on organic apples, make my mouth, lips, and tongue numb. But, here in New Zealand, I can enjoy an apple without any side effects.
• when we lived here 30+ years ago, there were two TV stations, TV1 and TV2. They even worked together to keep the listening audience informed. For example, if you were watching TV1 and 10pm rolled around, they would come on the air and say "well, it's 10pm and time for us to sign off, but if you still want to stay up to watch, switch over to TV2 and they will still be on the air for another hour." So now with satellite tv, there are many more choices. However, as the market grew, motels saw an opportunity to get the edge.  This next picture, and you may have to zoom in, shows this and reminds me of the days when motels advertised "color TV".

More from the surrounding Auckland area

 We have been exploring the area near Whangaparaoa (pronounced "fong-a-pa-ro-a") north of Auckland, which is also where we are living. We have been walking about 4 miles every morning on the wonderful beach of Orewa. That is where we saw the school classes out on the beach teaching "Deep Water Rescue" in my last post but here is that picture again.

Then when we were there yesterday, we saw the students in "Surfing" class.

The beach closest to us is Arkles Beach. The first picture is the south end of the beach and the second picture is looking to the south end from the north end.

This Arkles beach is fairly wide, so I am standing out at the water's edge taking a picture towards our house. It is the first house you see going up on the hill just above the white van and in the middle from left to right.

and here is our view looking down at the beach from our house. I am standing inside the living room.

When we lived here 30+ years ago, we were only a ten minute walk to our closest beach, Takapuna.  It was fun to go back and visit Takapuna Beach, where our enterprising girls "sold" tide pools to their cousin.

While we were at Takapuna, we re-visited our house on Hart Road.  It is the white house on the left half of the picture about in the middle from top to bottom.

This is the view we see when we turn into our driveway. That is our red car parked by our house.

Here are some things I find interesting:

    apparently, if you do not want to receive junk mail in your mailbox, you simply put out a sign

And isn't this interesting, our supermarkets in the USA give kids cookies, but New Zealand takes a healthier approach:

The wording is different, but the meaning is the same . . . RECEIVING (may need to zoom in)

Auckland and surrounding area

 Once we got to Auckland, one of our stops was our old neighborhood and the school our daughters attended.

So, here we are at 43 Hart Road, Takapuna, Auckland 9, our house for a year. And, since this is the year of our 50th anniversary, why not? The tree on the right side of the picture, (my left) is a mandarin orange tree that was about 3' tall when we lived there, but is now about 15' tall.  The landlords told our girls they could eat as many of the oranges they wanted.  Little did they know that our girls would eat every orange on the tree.  The large window over Bonnie's right shoulder was the girls bedroom.

That white van is where we parked our car and where the girls made a pet out of a hedgehog.  Gone are the days of the dairy delivering milk and cream.  

As we continued on around the neighborhood, we visited the school where the girls attended. The very same school where Kristin starred on the girls netball team and Kerri's swimming skills landed her a place on the swim team.  When they attended this school, there were large recycling bins at the driveway entrance for people to drop their recyclables.  Now, the bins are gone and curbside recycling is in vogue.  When they attended school here, every school had its own swimming pool and swimming was part of the educational curriculum.  Now they are raising money to build a new pool.  

The girls, along with all other students, were allowed to walk up to the local dairy and get a meat pie for lunch, and it is still there.

Since New Zealand is made up of islands, the ministry of education decided many years ago that all children should be taught how to swim. So, as children get older they are taught many different skills for water recreation.  Here is a class learning 'Deep Water Rescue'.

Takapuna was a great living experience for us, but it is developed with a high concentration of high density housing.

After this nostalgia excursion, we drove on over to Devonport and viewed Auckland from Mt. Victoria. As usual, we took our lunch with us and had a picnic.

After staying a couple nights in Greenhithe, we drove on up to Paihia at the Bay of Islands.  The scenery was gorgeous.

We took the short ferry ride across the bay and drove to Russel which was the first New Zealand capitol, the first European settlement, and home to the first church in New Zealand which still holds regular worship services.

Sadly, the time has come to spend the last night before taking Shaaron and Karen to the airport. It was sad to see them leave. After taking them to the airport and picking up a smaller car, Denny and Lisa accompanied us to the place we will stay for the next month in Arkles Bay, north of Auckland. 

Now the time has come to take Denny and Lisa to the airport. Against our better judgement, we were sorry to see them leave.