Season's Greetings and a Happy New Year to all, this is a quick post with some photos of our Christmas (and summer) holidays.
For those in Ireland, the pohutukawa tree is known as New Zealand's Christmas tree, as their festive crimson flowers usually are in full bloom around Christmas time. In Wellington the pohutukawas are quite spectacular this year; there is a good example of one just over the road from our place in Connaught Terrace:
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| View from our Living Room Window with Pohutukawa Tree |
We had better luck with our (non-native) chopped down Christmas tree this year, a healthy green specimen as opposed to the wilting rather pathetic one last year. Marian was rather pleased with her decorating efforts:
View from our living room window at night:
We drove up from Wellington to Hamilton on Saturday 22nd December (around 7 hours). We didn't take many snaps at Hamilton, but had a good time with all of the family over Christmas:
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| Emily and Jess (hair by Salon Maz) |
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| John G. and Katherine |
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| Christmas Dinner Table for 18 |
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| Kath and John hard at work in the kitchen... |
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| ...While Mum Supervises |
On the 29th December Marian and I hit the road heading east, and drove through the Bay of Plenty around East Cape and down the East Coast of the North Island to Anaura Bay where we camped for four nights.
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| Anaura Bay |
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| Sunset Anaura Bay |
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| Campground at Anaura Bay |
During our stay we visited nearby Tologa Bay which boasts NZ's longest wharf at 660 metres:
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| Tolaga Bay Warf |
After four nights at Anaura Bay we drove south through Gisborne and then inland to Lake Waikaremoana in the Uruwera National Park. This is a remote and very beautiful spot with some of the North Island's best untouched native forest.
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| Campground at Lake Waikaremoana |
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| Lake Waikaremoana with Panekiri Bluff |
There is a very spectacular 4 day walk that you can do around the lake but as we were only there for 2 nights we did a short day walk to Lake Waiakareiti.
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| Aniwaniwa Falls |
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| Maz on the Track to Lake Waikareiti |
There were some good stands of native cabbage trees (cordyline australis) at the camp ground; there are many of these trees in Ireland although many were killed off in the big freeze of 2010. So Dympna if your cabbage tree still hasn't recovered here are some photos to show how they look in their native habitat:
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| Cabbage Trees |
The sunset over Lake Waikaremoana was quite spectacular:
