Kiwi talk, snorkelling and Marmite

Gudday me pumpkins!

I shall now teach you how to speak Kiwi... Through a picture.

Read and learn

Brilliant eh, and I thought most of those were CC's own little peculiar ways of saying stuff, not nationwide...

Anyways, the last entry I wrote concluded our little road trip, and since then CC has started work (working insane hours of 5am-4pmish), so it's a whole lot more relaxed and uneventful for me. On the Saturday (the day after the previous entry) we drove to Auckland, where CC lives, and on Sunday he started work. Meanwhile I've been following the same pattern for the past few days: sleeping/eating/running/facebooking/blogging/planning/cleaning in the morning, then going out somewhere to explore in the afternoon.

But first, let's backtrack to SATURDAY THE 14^th. A relaxing morning (btw, yesterday I challenged CC to a day without him using the word “relax”. He uses it a lot. I guess that's good tho. And descriptive). Many moments that I felt should be very surreal, like making Christmas cards in the garden in my bikini, but which weren't. If you are in a surreal places generally, specific details can't make it seem more surreal eh. Also decorated the Christmas tree yay!

Then headed off to Goat's Island. About one and a half hours from Wellsford, Goat's Island is a marine reserve (What is a marine reserve? Like a nature reserve, but in the water, explained a helpful info board. I at least learnt from that :P) well-known for its glass-bottom boats. We, however did not get on a glass-bottomed boat, but went snorkelling!

I was well excited for it – I've never been snorkelling before, but have always wanted to. The water was pretty calm so would be clear, SO COOL...

I apologise for any future nightmares 

Unfortunately also, SO SCARY. I have learnt throughout my life that I don't like water, if not before then definitely after a year with the canoeing club at university! Water is fun, but it is scary. So many things to get the hang of while snorkelling, including a) knowing how to breath b) breathing c) breathing in air, not water, etc. And when I did get the hang of it, all the looming water plants coming out of the depths were pretty darn freaky.

BUT it got easier the more I got used to it. I would like to go again – not immediately, thank you – but definitely, since I know it is something I could get used to.

A lovely beach anyways, with very warm rock pools.

Also saw a crab here!

Waterfall at the end of the beach

Bath time!!

After the beach we went to get ice creams in the nearby gorgeous village of Matakana. Blueberry <3 (I got more than CC even though I had “one scoop” and he had “two scoops”)

The fresh fruit of Matakana (it's amazing having all your fruit grown in your own country!)

The public toilets of Matakana (see previous entry)

CC and I looking exceptionally well with our ice creams 

A bit of sightseeing on the way of course...:

Some pretty beach

Some pretty view

Getting into Auckland was quite exciting. Went food shopping. I love Kiwi Supermarkets, had so much fun at CC's work wandering round the shop, finding random things, like:

Kiwis have Marmite. Except it's in a different kind of jar with a different font etc. But they also have “British” Marmite, with the same jar and same font etc, all the same except that it's not called Marmite, but “Our Mate”. Kiwis do play on a lot of British food. According to the beloved Hayzybobzykins, even though there is a lot of Cadbury chocolate here, it doesn't taste the same in the UK. INTERESNO.

Our mate (well not mine)

Lol

I was planning on making this entry also about the next day, the day I went to explore Northcote, but I think I've filled it in too much my rambling. I'll try and be more straight-to-the-point in the next entry. Ok, there is gonna be a BIG back-log.

A la prochaine mes chéris,

Emmmzzzzzyyyyyy

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