Giedre tyttö Ozista

Enjoing while we can

If you have seen the Black Sheep movie, I'm not surprised if your heart froze for a second. Surely these sheep look evil, galloping full speed towards you!

In fact it is pretty hard to get any pictures of sheep running towards you. They much rather run away. It is spring here and you can see lots of spring lambs in the fields as you drive around Auckland. Sheep are cute! And we have 40 million of them here (compared to 4 million of human population!)

We decided that we should explore our immediate surroundings more (especially considering some major decisions possibly looming in the horizon... Well, if you haven't heard about it yet, we may move to another country yet again... More on this sometime soon... ) and one of the places that has been totally under-explored for us in NZ was the Coromandel peninsula.

It is just some 2 hrs away by car and it is incredibly beautiful. There are lots of tiny beaches and small settlements with huge foresty ranges in the middle... Oyster farms on one side, surf beaches on the other... Satisfies any taste!!!

We tried to visit the Hot Water beach at Haihei (where my mother was happily soaking last summer), but even at low tide the waves were crashing in washing away any warm water that managed to accumulate in our puddles. The only option was to dig our feet deep in the hot sand and stand in the raging water, feet scorching, legs freezing. We had fun watching other people being washed away by waves crashing in.

We tried to wait for real spring to come before we went to Coromandel, but we realised that warm weather may not come till December or January. Last Friday we left Auckland and headed towards dark clouds and pouring rain.

We still managed to find sunny and warm moments in the seemingly never ending rain.

I had neck pain (caught cold draft somewhere), but courageously enjoyed everything that Coromandel had to offer.

We'll be going to Sydney next weekend for Kaj's conference and my birthday.. Well, yes, the 4th decade of my life is about to start next week.. :) Really, the best way to enjoy it is to go away from it all...

We'll definitely miss the open views, nature, green hills, bush and beaches if/when we move... So we'll try to enjoy it while we can...